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THE 



POETICAL WORKS 



y 



THOMAS G,RAY. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. W. RADCLYFFE. 



EDITED, WITH A MEMOIR, 



By HENRY REED, 



PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF PENNSTL-VANIA. 




PHILADELPHIA : 
HENRY CAREY BAIRD, 

SUCCESSOR TO E. L. CAREY. 
1851. 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1850, by 

HENRY CAREY BAIRD, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



Printed by T. K. & P. G. Collins. 



TO 

JAMES T. FIELDS, 

OF BOSTON, 

THIS EDITION OF THE POETICAL WORKS OF GRAY 

IS INSCRIBED, 

WITH FEELINGS OF FRIENDSHIP AND ADMIRATION, 



THE PUBLISHER. 



PREFACE. 



This volume has been prepared for the purpose of offer- 
ing to the public an edition of the poetical works of Gray, 
which may not only prove attractive by the embellishments 
of art, but also, by the completeness of the collection and 
the accuracy of the text, commend itself as a standard 
edition. To the poet's genius, the tribute of earnest and 
studious editorship has been so well rendered by the scho- 
lars of his own country, that it becomes an American 
editor's first duty to acknowledge his obligations to them — 
Mason, Wakefield, Mathias, and above all the Rev. John 
Mitford, the latest and a living editor, whose elaborate and 
long-continued research seems to have left nothing more 
to be gleaned for acquaintance with the life and character 
of Gray, or the illustration of his writings. Pains have 
been taken to improve the opportunities, which now exist, 
of making this the most complete collection of Gray's 

1* 5 



PREFACE. 



poems which has yet appeared. The text, which, with 
some few and not important exceptions, has been followed, 
is that given by Mr. Mitford in the Aldine edition. 

A new arrangement of the poems is made. In this 
particular, no edition has the poet's own authority, not 
only, because a good many of the poems are posthumous, 
but because some which appeared in his lifetime were not 
introduced into his own collections. In this edition, the 
poems are divided into those which were published during' 
Gray's life, and the Posthumous pieces, — with subdivisions 
of each of these two classes into the original poems, Eng- 
lish and Latin, and the Translations. In each subdivision, 
the poems are arranged according to the dates of composi- 
tion, as far as they could be determined. 

The notes are placed in an appendix, so as not to 
encumber the text, and have been selected with a view 
to avoid needless annotation, and at the same time to com- 
prehend all that is requisite to illustrate the poems. Gray's 
own notes are all given, and indicated by his name. The 
other notes are chiefly Mr. Mitford's; a few introduced in 
this edition are indicated by the initial letter R. 



Philadelphia. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Memoir of the Life and Writings of Gray 13 



Commendatory Poems: — 

Sonnet by Mitford 107 

Stanzas by Moultrie 109 

POEMS :— 

Ode on the Spring 129 

Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard West 132 

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College 133 

Hymn to Adversity 138 

Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat 141 

Elegy written in a Country Church-yard 144 

A Long Story 153 

The Progress of Poesy 1G1 

7 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

The Bard 168 

Epitaph on Mrs. Jane Clerke 170 

Epitaph on Sir William Williams 178 

Ode for Music 179 

PoEMATA : 

Hymeneal on the Marriage of his Royal Highness 

the Prince of Wales 185 

Luna Habitabilis 189 

Translations : — 

The Fatal Sisters 194 

The Vegtam's Kivitha; or, The Descent of Odin 198 

The Triumphs of Owen 204 

The Death of Hoel 207 

Two Fragments from the Welsh 208 

POSTHUMOUS POEMS:— 

Agrippina, a Tragedy 213 

To Ignorance 223 

The Alliance of Education and Government 226 

Stanzas to Mr. Bentley 232 

Ode to Vicissitude 234 

Lines 238 

Song 239 

Tophet 240 

Sketch of his own Character 241 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

The Candidate; or, The Cambridge Courtship 242 

Impromptu suggested by a view, in 1776, of the Seat 

and Ruins of a deceased Nobleman 244 

Impromptu while walking with Mr. Nicholls 245 

Part of an Epitaph on the Wife of Mason 246 

Extempore Epitaph on Anne, Countess of Dorset 246 

The Characters of the Christ-Cross Row 247 

Poemata : — 

Sapphic Ode: To Mr. West 251 

Alcaic Fragment 254 

Latin Lines addressed to Mr. West, from Genoa 254 

Elegiac Yerses occasioned by the Sight of the Plains 

where the battle of Trebia was fought 255 

Carmen ad C. Favonium Zephyrinum 256 

Fragment of a Latin Poem on the Gaurus 258 

A Farewell to Florence 262 

De Principiis Cogitandi 263 

Alcaic Ode written in the Album of the Grande Char- 
treuse 275 

Part of an Heroic Epistle from Sophonisba to Ma- 

sinissa 277 

Greek Epigram 280 

Translations and Imitations: — 

Statius Theb. lib. vi. ver. 704—720 281 

Tasso Gerus. Lib. cant. xiv. st. 32 283 



10 CONTENTS. 



Page 

Propertius, lib. iii. Eleg. v. v. 19 287 

Propertius, lib. ii. Eleg. i. v. 17 290 

Imitation of an Italian Sonnet of Signior Abbate 

Buondelmonte 294 

Petrarca, Parti. Sonnetto 170 295 

From the Anthologia Graeca 297 

In Bacchae furentis Statuam 297 

In Alexandrum, Mve effictum 297 

In Medeae Imaginem, Nobile Timomachi 

Opus .297 

In Niobes Statuam 298 

A Nymph offering a Statue of Herself to 

Venus 298 

In Amorem dormientem 298 

From a Fragment of Plato 299 

In Fontem Aquae calidae ....299 

Argus 300 

Rufinus 300 

Ad Amorem 300 

Notes 303 



MEMOIR 



OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 



GRAY. 



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MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



This sketch of the. life and writings of the poet 
Gray may be introduced, not inappositely it is be- 
lieved, by the mention of an early proof of the 
poAver of his poetry, by which his name has become 
associated with that of one of the most illustrious 
of England's soldiers, and with a glorious page in 
her annals. 

On the 13th of September, 1759, a day which 
proved fatal to French dominion on the continent 
of America, and which gave to Wolfe at once 
death and an undying name, as the conqueror of 
Canada, — when the embarkation of the British army 
took place to effect a landing beneath the Heights 
of Abraham, the English general led the way in 

2 13 



14 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

an enterprise, planned as the last hope of vic- 
tory over Montcalm in his almost impregnable 
position. A little after midnight, the flowing tide 
of the St. Lawrence bore the boats, freighted 
with an army, along to a destination dark as the 
night that hid them from the enemy's sentinels 
on the shore. The darkness of the hour and 
of a clouded sky disclosed no more than the 
dim outline of the hostile heights of the citadel 
of Quebec and of the Castle of St. Louis ; there 
was silence deep as the darkness, for safety and 
success depended on secresy ; and no sound was 
heard save the rippling of the river. It was 
at such a moment and in such a situation that in 
hushed tones, just audible to the officers in his 
boat, the voice of Wolfe murmured over the stanzas 
with which a country churchyard had inspired 
the muse of Gray ; and as the last line, which 
speaks of 

"The bosom of his Father and his God" 

died away upon the soldier's lips, (lips which in a 
few hours were to close over life's last utterance 
in the placid content of a victor's death,) he added, 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 15 



"Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the author 
of that poem than take Quebec !" 

This pleasing and pathetic incident was preserved 
in the memory of the late Professor Robison of 
Edinburgh, who, in youth, had been in military 
service, and was present in the boat with Wolfe : 
and now history has made the tradition her own. 
Lord Mahon, the historian, after narrating it, ob- 
serves : " One noble line, 

' The paths of glory lead but to the grave,' 

must have seemed, at such a moment, fraught with 
a mournful meaning." 

No finer tribute was ever paid to poetic power: 
in its simple sublimity, it is worthy to take its 
place beside the classic story of the homage which 
the Macedonian conqueror rendered to the genius 
of the great lyrical poet of Greece. It occurred 
when "The Elegy" was comparatively a new poem, 
the date of its publication being about nine years 
before ; and it was when Gray was a living author. 
The story has a double and a reflex interest in its 
connection both with the poet and the soldier. The 
enthusiasm with which Wolfe spoke of the poem 



16 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

tells of the poet's power and of his own suscepti 
bility. 

A frame, constitutionally feeble, had been pros- 
trated by the cares of the campaign and the com- 
mand of a disheartened army ; and it was in the 
scarce recruited strength of convalescence that the 
attack on Quebec was planned : then it was, just 
as the enterprise hung on the crisis of achievement 
or disaster, and the silent midnight floating on the 
tide of the St. Lawrence gave a momentary inac- 
tion — a brief pause for pensiveness, — that the poet's 
words rose up in the soldier's memory, brought 
there, it may be, by mysterious forebodings of death, 
and associations with the far-off English churchyards 
and the tranquil beauty of the rural atmosphere 
that hung over them. How must the poem have 
sounded over the soldier's soul, like sweet and solemn 
music, deepening his placid and heroic self-posses- 
sion, which was soon to be followed by the no less 
characteristic ardour wherewith he led his army 
up the cliffs to their battle-ground, and then the 
repose of tranquil consciousness of the coming of 
death ! What a proof of the magic that dwells in 
the words and the music of a true poet ! 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 17 

This incident has been referred to as one of the 
earliest and most impressive proofs of that pathetic 
power with which, by a single poem, Gray has 
moved the hearts of all who recognise with him 
kindred associations with Christian burial-places. 
And so, year after year, for a century, has this 
poem endeared its author to many a reader, making 
his imagery and words familiar as any in English 
verse. It is one of the rare instances of a single 
and short poem proving a foundation deep and 
broad enough to build a poet's fame on. It is the 
production first thought of when the name of 
Gray is mentioned, and it has made him emi- 
nently the elegiac poet of English literature. 

The story of the life of Gray is a short and 
simple one, for it was a life of secluded studious- 
ness, spent in the companionship of books and of 
the productions of art — painting, architecture, and 
sculpture, and in communion with nature. His liv- 
ing companionship was with a few of his kindred 
who were dear to him, or to whom he was dutiful, 
and with a few choice friends with whom he found 
sympathy. 

2* 



18 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

Thomas Gray was born in Cornhill, London, 
on the 26th of December, 1716. His father, Mr. 
Philip Gray, was a citizen and money-scrivener of 
London, and his mother's maiden name was Antro- 
bus. The poet was their fifth child, and the only 
one of twelve children who lived beyond infancy. 
It was by the mother's ready courage that his life 
was saved from the constitutional malady which 
proved so fatal to her offspring, and which she 
warded off in him, in the paroxysm of the attack, 
by opening a vein with her own hand. It was 
moreover by that mother's unfailing fortitude and 
affection that the life thus saved was made fit for 
all that gave it happiness and honour. The father's 
character stands in dark contrast, which it might 
perhaps be well to touch on with reserve rather 
than to bring into painful prominence, were it not 
that such reserve would be injustice to the wife 
and mother, whose womanly virtues had the stern 
nurture of the misery of a husband's cruelties. 
Philip Gray was an improvident, selfish, morose, 
and passionate man, the excesses of whose temper 
stopped not short of acts of brutal violence, which 
made him the terror of his household, and drove 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 19 

the wife of his bosom from under his roof to seek 
in the law of the land shelter for her person and 
her life. The extent of the wife's sufferings, and 
of the exertions and sacrifices made by her for the 
good of her son, was not fully known until, a few 
years ago, there came to light a manuscript docu- 
ment, containing the statement of a case, and the 
opinion of an eminent civilian in Doctors' Com- 
mons, dated in 1735, when the solitary surviving 
child of this unhappy marriage had nearly reached 
the years of manhood. From these papers it ap- 
pears, that Dorothy Antrobus had, for some ten 
years before her marriage with Philip Gray, been 
engaged in trade (the sale of China wares) with a 
brother and sister, by Avhich means she had laid up 
a small property of a few hundred pounds. Before 
the marriage, Philip Gray agreed that this property 
should continue as his wife's stock in trade, and 
that the profits should accrue to her sole benefit. 
For twenty years and more was the business con- 
tinued; and thus, by womanly thrift and industry, 
was the wife and mother enabled to do what the 
husband and father's extravagance and heartless- 
ness would have left undone. It was the wife who 



20 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

provided apparel for herself and for her children, 
and furniture for their dwelling-place; and, what 
gives more lasting interest to this story of domestic 
infelicity, it was the mother who gave the son an 
education, and in so doing gave to him the power of 
fame, and to the world the imperishable delight of 
his lays. For her son's expenses at Eton and at 
Cambridge the mother made provision. Growing 
necessitous in consequence of rash expenditures, the 
nusband grasped at the property which the mar- 
riage contract had set aside, and sought by ill treat- 
ment to compel the wife to withdraw it from the 
uses it had long been appropriated to. In seeking 
professional advice, she set forth her grievances, — 
long-endured and in the brutal form of abusive 
language and bodily violence ; but she also affirmed a 
resolute purpose. "These" (such was her language) 
"she was resolved, if possible, to bear: not to leave 
her shop of trade, for the sake of her son, to be 
able to assist in the maintenance of him at the 
University, since his father won't," 

The mother's heart did not fail her ; and thus a 
woman's love and fortitude rescued what the father's 
cruelty would have cast away. The father of Mil- 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 21 

ton, like the father of Gray, was a London scrivener, 
but the parallel stops there. If, as there is some 
reason to infer, the elder Milton would have guided 
his son into some lucrative calling, he appreciated 
the genius of that son, and gave it the largest 
culture ; and no piece of Milton's sets the characters 
of both in more pleasing and graceful light than the 
Latin poem in which such genuine poetry is inspired 
by filial piety and gratitude. To Gray, maternal 
love and womanly sagacity supplied what a father's 
wise and dutiful affection gave to Milton. A closer 
parallel to the circumstances of Gray's boyhood 
may be found in the story of the early years of a 
later and less renowned poet, Henry Kirke White, 
whose gentle spirit in childhood, animated with the 
purest poetic aspirations, was saved by a mother's 
zeal from the gross and uncongenial occupation to 
which the father's harder spirit of calculation would 
have doomed him. 

For one whose moral constitution was by nature 
framed with exquisite delicacy, a childhood and 
youth such as Gray's were most unpropitious. Do- 
mestic discord, the knowledge and often the sight 
of conjugal cruelty and misery, a father's wrongs 



22 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



and a mother's sufferings, could not but affect a 
spirit naturally sensitive, with a gloom which the 
after years would never do away with. It was a 
state of things which was witnessed by Gray in 
childhood, in boyhood, and in early manhood; and 
doubtless it gave a colour to his whole life, tinging 
it with that pensiveness which often darkened 
yet deeper into morbid sensitiveness and despond- 
ency. Gray never could have known a happy 
family-home: and hence an influence on his cha- 
racter and his career, which his biographers have 
hardly represented in its full effect. If the heart 
of childhood is easily diverted from its sorrows, 
and happy in the perpetual wealth of its "new- 
born blisses;" yet is it capable of sharp though 
short agonies, more so than adult wisdom is willing 
to take heed of; and what worse or more wasting 
misery could there be to a young and thoughtful 
spirit, than the unnatural conflict of filial piety ! 
Gray felt the cruel wrong which robs childhood 
of the rightful property of its innocence, the happi- 
ness, which, in after-years too, comes again with its 
glad memories to soothe and cheer and refresh the 
severer condition of adult and even aged humanity. 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 23 

A cloud that hangs over early life casts a long 
shadow : it travels onward with the life, ever and 
anon, fitfully or habitually obscuring it with gloom 
and despondency, — a moodiness which is perhaps 
unconscious memory of the past. It is a grievous 
poverty which comes from the loss of the recollec- 
tion of a cheerful childhood. When, twelve years 
after the death of this father, Gray wrote to his 
friend Mason, to condole with him on the loss of 
his father ; after alluding to some improper dis- 
posal of his property by the elder Mason, he says : 
"I must (if you will suffer me to say so) call it 
great weakness ; and yet, perhaps, your affection 
for him is heightened by that very weakness : for I 
know it is possible to feel an additional sorrow for 
the faults of those we have loved, even when that 
fault has been greatly injurious to ourselves." 

The excellent education which was secured to 
Gray by his mother's firmness and industry, began 
at Eton, where he was placed under the care of a 
maternal uncle, an assistant in that great school of 
England's youth. His biographers have not stated 
at what age Gray's residence at Eton began ; it 
was a removal from home that placed him, at least 



24 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

for a season, out of sight of the worst form 
of household unhappiness that could sadden and 
shock the heart of a sensitive child : it laid the 
ground-work of that fine scholarship which distin- 
guished both his studies and his writings through 
life. At Eton his acquaintance with Horace Wal- 
pole began, and that more congenial intimacy with 
Richard West, (a grandson of Bishop Burnet,) whose 
death was one of Gray's early sorrows. 

An Eton school-mate, Jacob Bryant, has recorded, 
after a lapse of near seventy years, his recollections 
of Gray's manners in youth ; and the manifestation, 
then, of that fastidious delicacy which always clung 
to him, shows how completely " the child was fa- 
ther of the man." "At this early time," (1729,) 
he writes, "Mr. Gray was in mourning for his uncle, 
Mr. Antrobus, who had been an assistant at Eton, 
and after his resignation lived and died there. I 
remember he made an elegant little figure in his 
sable dress, for he had a very good complexion and 
fine hair, and appeared to much advantage among 
the boys who were near him in the school, and 
who were rough and rude. Indeed, both Mr. Gray 
and his friend (Walpole) were looked upon as too 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 25 

delicate, upon which account they had few associates, 
and never engaged in any exercise, nor partook of 
any boyish amusement. Hence they seldom were 
in the fields, at least they took only a distant view 
of those who pursued their different diversions. 
Some, therefore, who were severe, treated them as 
feminine characters, on account of their too great 
delicacy, and sometimes a too fastidious behaviour." 

A fragment of one of Gray's school-compositions 
in Latin verse clung to the memory of his school- 
mate for threescore years and more. " One," he 
says, "I recollect, was upon the old story of words 
freezing in northern air, which he made when he 
was rather low in the fifth form ; but I can only 
call to mind part of two verses, upon the conse- 
quences of the supposed thaw : — 

' pluviseque loquaces 
Descendere jugis, et garrulus ingruit imber.'" 

The poet's Eton-life is, however, rendered memo- 
rable chiefly by that true lyrical poem, which, after 
years of absence, the sight of the home of his 
studious boyhood, with all its associations, inspired. 
The ode on a "Distant Prospect of Eton College" 



26 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

was composed in 1742, and published in 1747 : 
being the first publication of his English verse, it 
may be regarded as the beginning of his career 
as an English poet. Besides the personal and local 
interest that attaches to it, the poem bears the 
impress of high imaginative truth, not least in the 
poetic expression of some of the emotions with 
which we look back to the scenes and days of 
early life : in this it is always sure of a response 
from the common heart of man. The closing lines 
have become one of the most familiar quotations 
from English poetry. It is a retrospect filled with 
the poet's characteristic pensiveness : it is poetic 
truth in one of its sad aspects, which might be 
curiously and instructively compared with the bolder 
and more healthful view of human life given by 
Southey in his "Retrospect," and with Wordsworth's 
sublimer meditations on childhood. 
u In 1734 Gray left Eton for Cambridge, and in 
his nineteenth year was admitted a pensioner at 
Peter House, where he continued till 1738. Dur- 
ing his college residence, his first poetical produc- 
tion was the Latin verses, composed as a college 
exercise in 1736, on the marriage of Frederick, 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 27 

Prince of Wales, — that marriage which in the sequel 
became connected with so much of the disgraceful 
discord which existed between George the Second 
and his son. In the early part of the same year, 
when about twenty years old, Gray made what is 
believed to have been his first attempt in English 
verse : this was a translation of a part of the sixth 
book of the Thebaid. Writing to his friend, in 
May, 1736, he says : " For this little while past, I 
have been playing with Statius : we yesterday had 
a game at quoits together ; you will easily forgive 
me for having broke his head, as you have a little 
pique to him. I send you my translation, which 
I did not engage in because I liked that part of 
the poem ; nor do I now send it to you because I 
think it deserves it, but merely to show you how 
I mis-spend my days." This translation consisted 
of one hundred and ten lines : Mason selected 
twenty-seven lines as a specimen of Gray's first 
English versification, and to show how much at 
that early period he had imbibed of Dryden's spi- 
rited manner. Gray retained through life a high 
admiration of Dryden's poetry, as was strongly ex- 
pressed when he had occasion to counsel a younger 



28 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

poet. Writing to Beattie, in 1765, he adds this 
emphatic postscript to his letter: "P. S. Remem- 
ber Dry den, and be blind to all his faults." And 
in conversation, he told Beattie " that if there was 
any excellence in his own numbers, he had learned 
it wholly from that great poet ; and pressed him 
with great earnestness to study him, as his choice 
of words and versification were singularly happy 
and harmonious." In 1737, the Latin verses 
entitled " Luna Habitabilis" were composed also 
as a college exercise. In June, 1738, in a La- 
tin letter to West, the "Favonius" of his Latin 
correspondence, he addressed the Sapphic Ode to 
his friend, and the Alcaic fragment " lachry- 
marum fons." Of the ode, Mason in his biography 
said, " I choose to consider this delicate Sapphic 
Ode the first original production of Mr. Gray's 
muse ; for verses imposed either by schoolmasters 
or tutors ought not, I think, to be taken into con- 
sideration. There is seldom a verse that flows well 
from the pen of a real poet if it does not flow 
voluntarily." Having begun, while at Cambridge, 
the study of the Italian language, he made a trans- 
lation of part of the fourteenth Canto of Tasso's 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 29 



" Gerusalemnie Liberata," and also what, in a letter 
to West in 1738, lie calls " a loose version of that 
scene in Pastor Fido that begins ' Care Selve beati.' " 
"It was at Cambridge, and at this period of Gray's 
life, that we find the beginning of that series of 
letters, extending through thirty-five years, which 
has been preserved and published. The earliest 
date is of a letter to his schoolmate West, May 8, 
1736, and the last to a friend of later years, the 
Rev. Norton Nicholls, June 28, 1771, just a month 
before his death. The circle of Gray's correspond- 
ence was small : this was characteristic of the 
reserve with which he held intercourse with the 
world. His recluse habit of life and cautious com- 
panionship with his fellow-beings are apparent in 
the facts that he appears never to have corre- 
sponded with any woman other than a kinswoman, — 
and that his list of male correspondents, during 
thirty-five years, shows few other names than those 
of West, Horace Walpole, Wharton, Mason, Nicholls, 
and his young Swiss friend, Bonstetten. The rest 
of his letters, addressed to other persons, are in 
all not more than twenty. The collection of pub- 
lished letters has given Gray celebrity, along with 



3 : 



30 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

Swift, Chesterfield, Walpole, and Cowper, in English 
epistolary literature. Cowper's opinion was thus 
expressed : " I once thought Swift's letters the best 
that could be written, but I like Gray's better. 
His humour, or his wit, or whatever it is to be 
called, is never ill-natured or offensive, and yet, I 
think, equally poignant with the Dean's." 
v The character of Gray's college studies, so far 
as the course was at his command, cannot now be 
very precisely traced. There is reason to suppose 
that he withdrew as far as possible from the mathe- 
matical studies, for the cultivation of which the 
University of Cambridge has always been distin- 
guished, and applied himself to classical literature, 
history, and the kindred subjects. 

After a residence of about half a year in his 
father's house, Gray, at the request of his friend 
and schoolmate, Horace Walpole, accompanied him 
on a continental tour, which occupied more than 
two years, spent chiefly in Italy. This opened new 
and enlarged opportunities of cultivation, which, as 
his letters show, were sedulously improved, and 
which entered into the formation of his poetic cha- 
racter. He was a susceptible and studious observer 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 31 

of nature and of art. The intelligent and critical 
interest which he took in architecture, sculpture, 
painting, and music, is recorded both in his corre- 
spondence and in his criticisms. Of these, there 
have been preserved his " Criticisms on Architec- 
ture and Painting, during a Tour in Italy" (pub- 
lished in his prose- works) ; a collection of music, 
chiefly of the old Italian masters, made at Florence, 
in six large volumes, with Dotices and remarks on 
their works ; and an annotated collection of en- 
gravings. 

However valuable Gray's Italian tour may have 
been in adding to his learning and accomplishments, 
and thus proving part of his imaginative culture, 
the direct poetic productions from it were limited 
to a few of his minor Latin poems. It was in the 
sympathy of his friendship for West, that he ap- 
pears to have found encouragement for poetic com- 
position ; for it was to him that Gray addressed 
a stanza in a letter from Genoa in 1739 ; the 
Elegiac Verses occasioned by the sight of the Plains 
where the battle of Trebia was fought; the Alcaic 
Ode, composed immediately after his journey to 
Frascati and the cascades of Tivoli, and addressed 



32 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

from Rome to the same friend, " Carmen ad C. 
Eavonium Zephyrinum ;" the Hexameters on Mount 
Gaurus, describing the sudden rising of Monte 
Nuovo near Puzzoli, and of the destruction which 
attended it in 1538, as described in Sandys's Tra- 
vels ; and the farewell lines to Florence, "Oh Fse- 
sulse amgena," which the late Sir Egerton Brydges 
cites as " that most exquisite Latin fragment, which 
so exactly describes the scenery on the banks of 
the Arno. This," he adds, "is the exact scenery 
from the public park or drive called the Cassini, 
on the banks of the Arno, above the city." (Recol- 
lections of Foreign Travels.) In the same letter 
Gray communicated his imitation of an Italian son- 
net by Buondelmonte, and also the first fifty-three 
lines of a poem, in Latin hexameters, which he had 
begun at Florence in the winter of 1740, — the di- 
dactic poem, "De Principfis Cogitandi," which is the 
most considerable of his Latin compositions, and far 
the most elaborate of all his poems in the concep- 
tion. It was meant to stand in much the same 
relation to Locke's Essay on the Human Under- 
standing as Lucretius's poem, "De Natura Rerum," 
did to the system of Epicurus. The general design 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 33 



of the poem was of four books : first, on the origin 
of our ideas ; second, on the distribution of these 
ideas in the memory; third, on the provinces of 
reason and its gradual improvement; and, fourth, 
on the cause and effects of the passions. Of this 
plan, all that was . accomplished was the fragment, 
in two hundred and seven lines, of the first book 
(with a statement of the "argument") and twenty- 
nine lines of the fourth book. That so little was 
in this achieved is perhaps less to be regretted, 
inasmuch as Gray's poetic career shows, that his 
genius, either for want of natural power or of due 
discipline, was not equal to elaborate and sustained 
productions ; and, moreover, even if he had been 
able to break through the circumscription of so 
contracted a system of metaphysics as that of 
Locke's, he would hardly have brought to a high 
philosophic theme that union of wise and imagina- 
tive philosophy which was needed. 

Much the greater part of Gray's foreign residence 
was at Florence; but the tour extended southward 
to Naples and its neighbourhood, where he and 
Walpole were among the first English travellers 
who visited the remains of Herculaneum. This 



34 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

was in the summer of 1740, a little more than a 
year after the important excavations, which led to 
the discovery of the ancient city, were begun by 
order of the King of the Two Sicilies. Gray's good 
scholarship served in pointing out to his companion 
the reference to the hidden city in Statius's 
" Sylvse ;" and a letter to his mother describes the 
appearance it presented to his eyes. 

At Reggio, in 1741, after two years of travelling 
companionship, Gray and Walpole parted, and in 
anger. The cause of the quarrel has never been 
precisely ascertained ; but an adequate explanation 
may be found in the want of congeniality, put as 
it was to the test of travel and its daily associa- 
tion ; the rupture was doubtless the delayed catas- 
trophe of petty and repeated discords. The contrast 
of character and situation in life has been well stated 
by Sir Egerton Brydges in his " Imaginative Bio- 
graphy:" "Gray, partly from native turn of mind, 
and partly from the sufferings of childhood, was of 
a most grave and melancholy cast ; timid, reserved, 
delicate, and fastidious ; an exquisite classical scholar 
and skilled in all the arts. Walpole was the spoiled 
child of fortune ; gay, volatile, ingenious, witty, ac- 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 35 

complished, as fond of the arts as Gray, but less 
sure in his taste ; vain, conceited, rich in anecdote, 
curious in history, researchful in little things rather 
than in great, delighted with gems and frivolities, 
and artificial in all he said, did, and liked." What 
a contrast between the homes which these two young 
men had come from ! — the one, the humble and un- 
happy household of the morose and despotic London 
scrivener ; the other, the city residence of the prime 
minister, or his country-lodge at Richmond, or the 
more magnificent mansion at Houghton, with all 
the luxuries and social voluptuousness in which Sir 
Robert Walpole delighted to find relief from the 
cares of state ! 

Not a great while after they had both returned 
to England, there was a restoration of inter- 
course, if not of friendship, the overtures of recon- 
ciliation having been offered by Walpole. Many 
years after the quarrel, when Mr. Nicholls endea- 
voured to ascertain from Gray an account of it, he 
said, " ' Walpole was the son of the first minister, 
and you may easily conceive that on this account 
he might assume an air of superiority, or do or 
say something, which perhaps I did nut bear as 



36 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

well as I ought.' This was all I ever heard from 
him on the subject; but it is in stead of a volume 
to those who know the independent and lofty spirit 
of Gray." This is confirmed by Walpole's own 
unreserved admissions in a letter to Mason, about 
two years after the death of Gray : " I am con- 
scious," he writes, "that in the beginning of the 
differences between Gray and me, the fault was 
mine. I was young, too fond of my own diver- 
sions ; nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated 
by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my 
situation, as a prime minister's son, not to have 
been inattentive to the feelings of one, I blush to 
say it, that I knew was obliged to me, — of one 
whom presumption and folly made me deem 
not very superior in parts, though I have since 
felt my infinite inferiority to him. I treated him 
insolently. He loved me, and I did not think he 
did. I reproached him with the difference between 
us, when he acted from the conviction of knowing 
that he was my superior. I often disregarded his 
wish of seeing places, which I would not quit my 
own amusements to visit, though I offered to send 
him thither without me. Forgive me, if I say 






MEMOIR OF GRAY. 37 

that his temper was not conciliating, at the same 
time that I confess to you that he acted a more 
friendly part, had I had the sense to take advan- 
tage of it. He freely told me my faults. I de- 
clared I did not desire to hear them, nor would 
correct them. You will not wonder that, with the 
dignity of his spirit, and the obstinate carelessness 
of mine, the breach must have widened till we be- 
came incompatible." 

The rupture between Gray and Walpole appears 
to have an almost exaggerated importance in the 
poet's biography; and one is half tempted to be- 
lieve that it is for lack of materials in a life so 
uneventful that it occupies a rather inordinate 
space. Indeed, with most men, such an occur- 
rence would have passed away as one of the casual 
and most common disappointments of life, — the 
natural result of circumstances bringing into too 
close connection two uncongenial tempers. Yet, 
upon a spirit so delicately sensitive as Gray's, the 
effect was no doubt a deep and abiding one ; it 
probably compelled a more recluse reserve and a 
more self-consuming silence, and thus aggravated 
the morbid tendencies of his nature. When the 



38 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



friends "stood aloof" (to borrow the language of 
Coleridge's sublime image of a broken friendship), 
there were "scars remaining" on the heart of Gray 
which the after-years did not wear away. 

Having parted from Walpole, Gray went to 
Venice, thence to Padua, Verona, Milan, and Turin; 
crossed the Alps, and then homewards through 
France. His published correspondence gives no 
letters during this period of his absence ; perhaps 
he was not in heart to write. His tour homewards 
is associated with his most famous Latin poem, the 
Alcaic Ode, written in the Album of the Grande 
Chartreuse in Dauphiny, August, 1741. He had 
visited the place on his way to Italy, — with what 
deep emotion, appears from his letters to his mother 
and to West. To the former, in describing the spot, 
he speaks of it as " one of the most solemn, the 
most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes I 
ever beheld." To the latter he writes, " In our 
little journey up to the Grande Chartreuse, I do 
not remember to have gone ten paces without an 
exclamation that there was no restraining ; not a 
precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant 
with religion and poetry. There are certain scenes 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 39 

that would awe an atheist into belief, without the 
help of other argument. One need not have a very 
fantastic imagination to see spirits there at noon- 
day ; you have Death perpetually before your eyes, 
only so far removed as to compose the mind with- 
out frighting it. I am well persuaded St. Bruno 
was a man of no common genius, to choose such 
a situation for his retirement ; and perhaps should 
have been a disciple of his, had I been born in 
his time." 

On his homeward way, Gray stepped aside to 
renew the solemn impressions of the place, deepened 
now with the pensiveness arising from the melan- 
choly sentiments of a broken friendship. His feel- 
ings found utterance in the admirable Ode written 
in the Album of the Monastery. It is proper to 
add the remark here, that while this brief com- 
position has been admired as a genuine burst of 
poetry, it has not stood the strict scrutiny of 
scholars with regard to the laws of Latin metre. 
It has been observed that Gray, though exquisite 
in the observance of the nicest beauty in the hexame- 
ters of Virgil, showed himself strangely unacquainted 
with the rules of Horace's lyric verse. 



40 MEMOIR OF GRAY, 

Travellers have sought at the Grande Chartreuse 
for the original copy of the Ode in Gray's delicate 
handwriting, but in vain. It is only recently that the 
loss of it has been satisfactorily explained, by the 
statement of the fact, that during the French Revo- 
lution, a rabble from Grenoble and other places 
attacked the monastery, burnt, plundered, or de- 
stroyed books, papers, and property, and dispersed 
the inmates. 

Gray returned to London in September, 1741 ; 
and in the following November his father died, 
leaving a broken estate and a dark domestic me- 
mory. His mother, with such of her property as 
she had been able to save from her husband's im- 
prudence and violence, retired with her sister to 
reside at Stoke, near Windsor. The room occupied 
by the son is still preserved and called "Gray's;" 
and his favourite walks are remembered. 

It was the desire of Gray's family that he should 
apply himself to the study of the law, with a view 
to professional life ; but as his means were inade- 
quate to the expenses of a residence in the Inns 
of Court, he determined to return to Cambridge, 
to take his bachelor's degree in Civil Law. There 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 41 

is nothing in Gray's correspondence, and little in 
his character, to show that he ever nerved his mind 
to the preparatory toil of professional pursuits, or 
that he was equal to that stern and self-denying 
abstinence with which a Mansfield or a Blackstone 
bade farewell to the Muses ; and still less was he 
equal to that combination of effort which, in our 
own day, has given to Talfourd distinction both as 
a lawyer and a poet. And, on the other hand, 
Gray did not turn away from the profession of the 
law, as Southey did, because of the consciousness 
of powers to be wisely and worthily employed in 
literature. When he shrunk from his profession, it 
was perhaps more in the spirit of literary self-indul- 
gence than in any faith in poetic impulses, such as 
has given to great poets moral authority to make 
the attainment of excellence in the poetic art the 
principal object of intellectual pursuit. That Gray 
would have been a far happier man, if his life had 
been actuated by stronger necessities, and the aims 
of it better defined, cannot be doubted. It is at 
the age of twenty-six that, writing to West, he 
exclaims, in allusion to himself: "Alas! for one 
who has nothing to do but amuse himself." 



42 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

This period of Gray's life also, shows that un- 
certainty of purpose which arises from inability 
to measure, with any approach to accuracy, powers, 
present or prospective, and thus to guide efforts 
wisely, according to ability already acquired or to 
be gained by future discipline. It was in 1742 that 
he was occupied with the plan of his tragedy of 
"Agrippina," — an effort prompted probably by wit- 
nessing in Paris the representation of Racine's 
"Britannicus," but checked by a little adverse 
though friendly criticism, and abandoned in diffi- 
dence of his powers as a dramatic poet. One 
complete scene,— the opening one, — and a few 
lines of a second, serve but to increase the list 
of his unaccomplished projects and poetic frag- 
ments. The first scene has never been printed 
exactly as it came from the poet's own hand, but 
as it appeared originally, with some alterations by 
Mason. 

As reading was always to him a more luxurious 
labour than composition, Gray applied himself to 
ancient literature and to Italian poetry, and found 
amusement in Joseph Andrews (in which his good 
sense saw more of practical philosophy than in the 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 43 

metaphysics of the Shaftesbury school,) and in the 
romances of Crebillon and Marivaux. When he 
■wrote poetry, it appears to have been with a linger- 
ing uncertainty whether English or Latin verse was 
the more genial effort ; for, while he made a transla- 
tion from Propertius, he also composed, in Latin, 
the unfinished " Heroic Epistle from. Sophonisba to 
Masinissa," which Mason published on account of 
the natural sentiment and poetic description in the 
passage on the triumphal entry of the young 
Masinissa, and because it was the only original 
specimen of Gray's Ovidian verse. A Greek epi- 
gram was at the same time communicated to West, 
to whom he said, " I send you an inscription for 
a wood adjoining to a park of mine (it is on the 
confines of Mount Cithseron, on the left hand as 
you go to Thebes) ; you know I am no friend to 
hunters, and hate to be disturbed by their noise." 
In June of 1742, while spending some time with 
his mother at Stoke, Gray composed his " Ode to 
Spring," entitled in the original manuscript "Noon- 
tide," and sent it to West. The letter was returned 
unopened, with the intelligence of the death of 
his young friend, whose declining health had been 



44 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

for some time watched with solicitude. It will 
have been observed, that this friend's affectionate 
hand had been the chosen receptacle of Gray's 
poetical effusions, as he from time to time was 
in the mood of composition ; and not improbably, 
for one whose nature was so delicately strung, there 
was need of the assurance of such congenial wel- 
come for what he would reluctantly have exposed 
to the world. 

Affectionate sorrow for his friend's death was not 
without its poetic promptings. His sense of be- 
reavement had direct expression in the " Sonnet 
on the Death of Mr. Richard West," — an expres- 
sion, undoubtedly, of true emotion, but rendered 
frigid by the fashion of it in the ill-judged intro- 
duction of mythological figure. It is, it may be 
added, the only attempt by Gray at that form 
of metrical composition, the power and beauty of 
which have been proved pre-eminently by Milton 
and by Wordsworth. The pensive influences of 
grief may be traced, less directly but with more 
excellent effects, in Gray's other productions in the 
summer of 1742. In August of that year, the 
" Ode on the Distant Prospect of Eton College," 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 45 

and the "Hymn to Adversity," were written; and 
about that time, the " Elegy in a Country Church- 
yard " was begun. To this period, also, belongs 
the fragment of the fourth book of the Latin 
poem, " De Principiis Cogitandi," which he had 
begun at Florence ; this fragment of twenty-nine 
lines was devoted wholly to an apostrophe to his 
dead friend; and such was Gray's fine facility in 
Latin verse, that in this form he has given the 
most natural and feeling expression of his sorrow, 
and of the beauty and purity of character which 
endeared the memory of West. 

This fragment of Latin poetry — complete in 
itself as an elegy — is supposed to have been Gray's 
last composition in that language, although it has not 
been ascertained when he continued the passage sent 
from Italy. It was until he was twenty-six years old 
that Gray's poetical aspirations appear to have been 
uncertain in their direction, whether to Latin or 
English verse. Mason states that at the time 
when their acquaintance began, which was in 1744, 
Gray set greater value on his Latin poetry than on 
what he had composed in his native tongue. Seve- 
ral causes may have concurred to produce such a 



46 MEMOIR OF GK AY. 

preference, — his Eton education, his thorough scho- 
larship, and the pleasurable facility it gave in the 
command of an ancient language, and, not least, 
the reserve which entered so largely into his cha- 
racter, and which, in the expression of his feelings, 
sought rather the shelter of a dead language than 
the exposure of a living one. The year 1742 
was probably decisive of the poet's career in this 
respect ; and the compositions of that year awakened 
in him a more just and inspiriting sense of his 
own powers in English verse. If Gray's ambition 
and taste had continued exclusively or chiefly di- 
rected to the composition of Latin poetry, it is 
apparent from what he has done, that he might 
have attained that high but limited reputation 
which success in such a department gives, — a repu- 
tation like that of Buchanan in an earlier century, 
or of Gray's contemporary (Cowper's favourite), 
Vincent Bourne. It has been reserved for a living 
and now aged author, Walter Savage Landor, to 
acquire distinction by the exquisite beauty and 
classical purity of his Latin poetry, by his English 
poems, and still more by his admirable English 
prose. Gray's compositions in that year had also 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 47 

another influence, in that they indicated to the 
poet himself the path of poetic composition which 
was the genial one for him, and in which he was 
to gain his fame. The "Ode to Spring," the Eton 
College Ode, and the " Hymn to Adversity," fol- 
lowing in quick succession, revealed the possession 
of genuine lyrical powers, and must have given to 
the poet the happy consciousness of ability to 
achieve, in the various forms of that species of 
poetry, what he was unequal to in the larger and 
more elaborate forms of dramatic or philosophical 
poetry. 

In 1742 Gray took his degree of bachelor of 
Civil Law. "I am got," he writes, "half-way to 
the top of jurisprudence." This did not, however, 
induce him to remove from Cambridge, where his 
continued residence and pursuits are thus described 
by his biographer and editor, the Rev. Mr. Mit- 
ford : — 

" Gray's residence at Cambridge was now con- 
tinued, not from any partiality to the place, but 
partly from the scantiness of his income, which 
prevented his living in London ; and partly, no 
doubt, for the convenience which its libraries af- 



48 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

forded. Original composition he almost entirely 
neglected ; but he was diligently employed in a 
regular and very constant perusal of the Greek 
and Latin authors ; so that in six years he had 
read all the writers of eminence in these languages, 
digesting and examining their contents, marking 
their peculiarities, and noting their corrupt and 
difficult passages. Many of these learned and 
critical commonplace books exist in the library of 
Pembroke College ; many others I have seen, all 
showing very curious and accurate scholarship, par- 
ticularly those on the Greek historians and orators ; 
and all written with a delicacy and accuracy of 
penmanship, scarcely inferior to the productions of 
the press. He formed, for his own instruction, a 
collection of Greek chronology, which extended 
from the 30th to the 110th Olympiad, a period of 
three hundred and thirty-two years, and which is 
chiefly designed to compare the time of all great 
men, their writings and transactions. 'I have read,' 
he writes, ' Pausanias and Athenseus all through, 
and iEschylus again. I am now in Pindar and 
Lysias ; for I take verse and prose together, like 
bread and cheese.' In the margin, also, of his 



MEMOIR, OF GRAY. 



49 



classical books, various critical notices are inserted ; 
and I remember many conjectural emendations in 
his copy of Barnes's Euripides ; although critical 
emendation of the text of the ancient authors was 
not that branch of scholarship in which he much 
indulged. To the works of Plato he paid great 
attention, as may be seen in the extracts from the 
Pembroke MSS. printed by Mr. Matthias ; and 
Mr. Cary, in his translation of the 'Birds of Aris- 
tophanes,' has done justice to Gray's accurate erudi- 
tion, displayed in his notes on that author." 

In the estimation of the late Dr. Parr, Gray 
stood second among those whom he considered best 
acquainted with the philosophy of Plato.* That 
eminent Greek scholar remarked, "When I read 
the poet Gray's observations on Plato, published 
by Mr. Matthias, my first impulse was to exclaim, 



* Floyd Sydenham, the translator of Plato, was the one 
whom he ranked first among the Platonic scholars. This 
explanation may be necessary, when the story is remem- 
bered of Parr's answer to the question: "Whom he reckoned 
the best Greek scholars in England?" — " Porson is the first, 
Wakefield is the third ; it does not become me to say who is 
the second." 



50 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

' Why did not I write this V Gray alone possesses 
the merit of avoiding the errors into which other 
commentators have fallen ; there are no fine-spun 
observations, — no metaphysical absurdities in Gray." 
Field's Life of Parr, vol. ii. p. 358. 

Among Gray's papers, after his death, was found 
the short fragment beginning with "Hail, Horrors, 
hail," which was evidently written .about the time 
of his return to Cambridge, and has obtained a 
title merely by Mason's remark : " It seems to have 
been intended as a hymn or address to Ignorance." 
The system of education at Cambridge was un- 
doubtedly in many respects uncongenial to Gray, 
whose zeal was directed to classical literature, and 
not to the exact sciences. The contradiction of 
his tastes prompted occasionally a querulous or sar- 
castic passage in his letters, and suggested probably 
the more elaborate querulousness of this fragment, 
to which undue importance has been given as a 
satire on the University. Dr. Parr thought it worth 
while to devote considerable space, in one of the 
long notes of his Spital Sermon, to a zealous de- 
fence of the University against what was considered 
Gray's injurious habit of speaking. That the poet's 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 51 

expressions, whether in' prose or verse, were ebulli- 
tions of some morbid and splenetic mood, rather 
than the utterance of deliberate judgment, is per- 
haps sufficiently shown by the simple fact that for 
twenty years the University of Cambridge was his 
chosen home. It was there, and in the year 1744, 
that his acquaintance began with William Mason, 
then a scholar of St. John's College. It was an 
acquaintance which, by sympathy of feeling and 
congeniality of taste, ripened into a friendship which 
lasted for life, and to which the survivor rendered 
the tribute of biography, which has for ever coupled 
the names of these two poets together, almost as 
closely as, by another kind of community, the names 
of some of the early English dramatists, especially 
Beaumont and Fletcher, are inseparably associated. 
In 1747, the Ode to Eton College was published 
by Dodsley, being the first separate publication of 
any of Gray's productions. Walpole endeavoured 
to persuade him to publish his poems along with 
those of his dead friend West.; but Gray's modesty 
and good sense both led him to look upon what he 
had done as materials too scanty for such a publi- 
cation. He gratified Walpole, however, by the 



52 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

humorous "Ode on the Death of a Favourite 
Cat." 

In the summer of the following year, Gray wrote 
from Stoke to his friend Dr. Wharton, the first 
fifty-seven lines of an ethical poem, which he thus 
speaks of: "I fill my paper with the beginning 
of an essay ; what name to give it I know not ; 
hut the subject is the Alliance of Education and 
Government : I mean to show that they must both 
concur to produce great and useful men." He 
afterwards proceeded with the composition of the 
poem as far as the 107th line ; and there stopping, 
left it to be added to the catalogue of his " Frag- 
ments," — another and the last of his large poetical 
enterprises unaccomplished. The "Commentary" 
which he prepared went beyond the text, and from 
it and some detached maxims, found among his 
papers, we can gather some further notion of the 
poet's conception. Gibbon, in a note in his History, 
has said : " Instead of compiling tables of chronology 
and natural history, why did not Mr. Gray apply the 
powers of his genius to finish the philosophic poem 
of which he has left such an exquisite specimen?" 
It was a fitting question for one who, like the his- 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



53 



torian, united gigantic powers of conception and of 
execution. Mason suggests that Gray was dis- 
couraged from further progress with the poem, by 
finding some of his reflections had been anticipated 
by Montesquieu in the "Esprit des Loix," which 
appeared at that time; and that afterwards, when 
he had thoughts of resuming his plan, and dedi- 
cating it with an introductory ode to the French 
philosopher, the death of Montesquieu in 1755 
caused him to give the plan up for ever. It was 
in the same amiable spirit of apology that his 
biographer explained the abandonment of the Latin 
philosophical poem, by the discouragement from the 
cold reception of Cardinal dePolignac's " Anti-Lucre- 
tius," — a long-expected modern Latin poem. For 
Gray's failure in his large literary enterprises there 
was a better reason than such as these which his 
biographer assigned ; and Gray himself probably 
understood it, as appears from his conversation 
with another one of his friends. "I asked him," 
said Mr. Nicholls, in his "Reminiscences of Gray," 
" why he had not continued that beautiful fragment 
beginning 

'As sickly plants betray a niggard earth,' 
5* 



54 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

lie said, because he could not. When I expressed 
surprise at this, he explained himself as follows, — 
that he had been used to write only lyric poetry, 
in which, the poems being short, he had accustomed 
himself and was able to polish every part ; that, this 
having become his habit, he could not do otherwise ; 
that the labour of this method in a long poem 
would be intolerable ; besides which, the poem would 
lose its effect for want of chiaro-oscuro ; for that, 
to produce effect, it was absolutely necessary to have 
weak parts." 

In 1749, one of the very few near family ties 
which were left for Gray, was broken by the death 
of his aunt, Mary Antrobus, his mother's sister 
and affectionate companion in the industry and the 
cares of her life. This bereavement, closing as it 
did on earth all the beautiful domestic affections 
that cluster round a maiden-aunt, was a serious 
loss to one whose love of kindred was confined 
to narrow limits. "I have lost," wrote Gray to 
his mother, "a person I loved very much, and 
have been used to from my infancy." It is supposed 
to have given another of those pensive poetic in- 
fluences to him, such as at the time of the death 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 55 



of his friend West: "The Elegy in the Country 
Churchyard," which had been begun some seven 
years before, was now resumed, and in 1750 com- 
municated to Walpole, to whom, in the summer of 
that year, he wrote: "I have been here at Stoke 
a few days (where I shall continue good part of 
the summer), and having put an end to a thing 
whose beginning you have seen long ago, I imme- 
diately send it you. You will, I hope, look upon 
it in the light of a thing with an end to it : a 
merit that most of my writings have wanted, and 
are like to want." 

"The Elegy" was much handed about in manu- 
cript, and, like Coleridge's " Christabel," in that 
condition gained considerable celebrity. In 1751, 
Gray, having received a forewarning that it was 
about to be printed without his consent, desired 
Walpole to place his copy in Dodsley's hands, 
to be printed and published, with this simple direc- 
tion: "Print it without any interval between the 
stanzas, because the sense is in some places con- 
tinued beyond them; and the title must be 'Elegy 
written in a Country Churchyard.' If he would 
add a line or two to say it came into his hands by 



56 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

accident, I should like it better." Such was Gray's 
characteristic shrinking from publicity ! 

It is not known precisely how long Gray was 
employed in the composition of "The Elegy;" 
although there is evidence of that frequent and 
studious revision, which was his habit of poetical 
composition. In . the early editions it was printed 
not in separated but continuous stanzas. In his 
acknoAvledgments to Walpole for his care of the 
publication, there is visible a sentiment of gratifi- 
cation in the expression of some lingering reluctance 
at getting into print: "You have," he writes, "in- 
deed, conducted with great decency my little mis- 
fortune. Nurse Dodsley has given it a pinch or 
two in the cradle, that (I doubt) it will bear the 
marks of as long as it lives." The locality of the 
"Elegy" is somewhat undetermined; but happily 
the interest of the poem is not at all dependent 
on such a question. The natural curiosity on this 
point finds some gratification in the tradition that 
it was composed within the precincts of the Church 
of Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge ; 
and the curfew is supposed to have been the great 
bell of St. Mary's. 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 57 

" The Elegy" promptly and permanently took 
its place in English poetry, and gave to its author 
that wide-spread and excellent popularity which has 
been spoken of at the beginning of this memoir, 
and which no verbal stricture or ingenuity of ad- 
verse criticism has diminished. Gray himself wit- 
nessed the sudden popularity of the poem with 
surprise, and is said to have attributed it to the 
subject, which might, he thought, have been as well 
received if written in prose as in verse. If such 
an opinion has been rightly reported, it shows an 
imperfect sense of that power over the imagination 
and the affections which is peculiar to poetry. 
Southey, with a deeper and wiser insight into 
poetic art, has spoken of this opinion of Gray's : 
" There is a charm in metre, as there is in music ; 
it is of the same kind, though the relation may 
be remote ; and it differs less in degree, perhaps, 
than one who has not an ear for poetry can be- 
lieve. * * * Gray's Elegy owes much of its 
popularity to its strain of verse ; the strain of 
thought alone, natural and touching as it is, would 
never have impressed it upon the hearts of thousands 
and tens of thousands, unless the diction and metre 



58 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

in which it was embodied had been perfectly in 
unison with it. Beattie ascribed its general recep- 
tion to both causes; 'It is a poem/ he says, 'which 
is universally understood and admired ; not only for 
its poetical beauties, but also, and perhaps chiefly, 
for its expressing sentiments in which every man 
thinks himself interested, and which, at certain 
times, are familiar to all men.' Neither cause 
would have sufficed for producing so general and 
extensive and permanent an effect, unless the poem 
had been, in the full import of the word, harmoni- 
ous." (Southey's Life of Cowper, vol. ii. p. 173.) 
Such is a poet's genial criticism on a fellow-poet's 
work. If it be not an ungracious effort to analyze 
the fame of "The Elegy," it may be traced first 
to the universal and unfailing interest of its theme 
and the pensive beauty that envelops it ; then to 
the manifold workings of a pure and cultivated im- 
agination upon it ; and, further, to an exquisite 
diction and the charm of the music of appropriate 
metre. " I know not," said Sir Egerton Brydges, 
" what there is of spell in the following simple 
line : 

' The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep ;' 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 59 



but no frequency of repetition can exhaust its 
touching charm." (Imaginative Biography, vol. i. 

p. 111.) 

A manuscript copy of "The Elegy," in the 
poet's own handwriting, preserved at Cambridge 
among the Pembroke College collection of Gray's 
papers, and given in fac-simile in Matthias's edition 
of his works, shows the interest with which he 
watched the steady popularity of the poem. In 
the margin of the manuscript, in Gray's own deli- 
cate writing, is the following note, the entries ap- 
parently made at different times, as the successive 
editions appeared: "Published in Feb ry 1751, by 
Dodsley, and went thro' four editions in two 
months ; and afterwards a fifth, 6th, 7th and 8th, 
9th, 10th and 11th, printed also in 1753 with Mr. 
Bentley's Designs, of wh ch there is a 2d edition, 
and again by Dodsley in his Miscellany, vol. 4th, 
and in a Scotch collection call'd the Union, trans- 
lated into Latin by Ch r Anstey Esq. and the Rev. 
Mr. Roberts, and publish'cl in 1762; and again in 
the same year by Rob: Lloyd M: A:" 

One peculiar and remarkable tribute to the merit 
of " The Elegy," is to be noticed in the great number 



60 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

of translations which have been made of it into 
various languages, both of ancient and modern Eu- 
rope. It is the same kind of tribute which has been 
rendered to "Robinson Crusoe" and to "The Pil- 
grim's Progress," and is proof of the same univer- 
sality of interest, transcending the limits of language 
and of race. To no poem in the English language 
has the same kind of homage been paid so abun- 
dantly. Of what other poem is there a polyglott 
edition ? Italy and England have competed with 
their polyglott editions of "The Elegy;" Torri's, 
bearing the title, "Elegia di Tomasso Gray sopra 
un Cimitero di Campagna, tradotta dell' Inglese 
in piu lingue. Verona, 1817. — Livorno, 1843 :" 
and Van Voorst's London edition. 

The following list of the translations will per- 
haps best illustrate this unwonted tribute to a 
poet's genius : 

Hebrew, by G. Venturi, an eminent Italian Orien- 
tal scholar, who in his version limited himself to 
the use of words and, as far as possible, phrases 
found in the Old Testament. 

Greek, by Professor Cooke, Cambridge, 1775 ; 
Dr. Norbury, Eton, 1793 ; Bishop Sparke, London, 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 61 



1794; Dr. Coote, London, 1794; Stephen Weston, 
London, 1794; Edward Tew, London, 1795; and 
the "Epitaph" alone, by J. Plumtree, 1795; and 
the Elegy by Cyprianio. 

Latin, by Robert Lloyd, 1762; W. H. Roberts, 
Cambridge, 1762, and London, 1778 ; Signor Gio. 
Costa, Padua, 1772 ; Gilbert Wakefield, Cambridge, 
1776; Christopher Anstey, London, 1778; anony- 
mous, Cambridge; S. N. E., London, 1824; W. 
Hilyard ; J. H. Macauley, in the " Arundines 
Cami ;" G. F. Barbieri ; Ben del Bene ; G. Ven- 
turi. 

Italian, by M. Cesarotti, Padua, 1772 ; G. Gen- 
nari, Padua, 1772 ; Dr. Giannini, London, 1782 ; 
G. Torelli, Verona, 1776; D. Trant, (prose); M. 
Lastri; A. Buttura ; P. Baraldi ; M. Castellazi ; 
Elisabetta Sesler Bono (prose) ; M. Leoni ; L. Man- 
cini; Cavazzoca. D. Gregori, Rome, 1821. 

Portuguese, by Boulard. 

French, by de Berchere, Hookham, 1778 ; L. D., 
Chatham, 1806; Anonymous (prose), Paris "an vi."; 
Le Tourneur, Dubois, Cabanis, Che'nier, Fayolle, 
Kenvalant, Grenus, Charrin, Le Mierre, Yilleneuve, 
Fontanes, Chateaubriand. 



62 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



Cferman, by Gotter, Gotha, 1788 ; Seume, Riga, 
1801 ; Kosegarten, 1798 ; Mason ; Muller ; Rup- 
precht.* 

One of the incidents of the popularity of " The 
Elegy" was Gray's acquaintance with his neighbour?-, 
Lady Cobham and Miss Speed, which prompted his 
attempt at humorous poetry, "A Long Story," 
opening with the clever description of the Eliza- 
bethan architecture of Stoke-Pogis House, then in 
possession of the Viscountess Cobham, — a mansion 
memorable in earlier times, both as a residence of 
the celebrated Sir Edward Coke, who married a 
widow of the heir of Chancellor Hatton, and as 
one of the places of confinement of Charles I., 
when in the power of the Parliament : it has since 

* This list is compiled from several authorities, but 
chiefly from an article selected from a German miscellany 
for " The Literary World," New York, Oct. 1849 ; and from 
several communications to that novel and useful periodical, 
"Notes and Queries," London, 1850. 

Another instance may be mentioned of the unabated in- 
terest attaching to the memory of Gray : At a sale in Lon- 
don, in 1845, of books and manuscripts which had belonged 
to him, two small half sheets of paper, in a torn condition, 
were sold for one hundred pounds sterling. It was a manu- 
script of " The Elegy" in the poet's own handwriting. 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 63 

Gray's time been the seat of the Perm family, 
and is now the property of the Right Hon. Mr. 
Labouchere. In one of his letters (Dec. 1751) to 
Wharton, he says of this effusion : " The verses you 
so kindly try to keep in countenance were wrote 
to divert that particular family, and succeeded ac- 
cordingly; but being showed about in town, are not 
liked there at all." 

Gray's next poetical composition was the "Stanzas 
to Mr. Bentley," in acknowledgment of the designs 
prepared by that gentleman, in 1753, for a new 
edition of the poems. There appears to be no 
reason to entitle these stanzas, as Mason has 
done, a fragment. A corner of the only manu- 
script that was preserved was torn off, and hence 
the last stanza stands incomplete in two of the 
lines. Mason and others have suggested several 
readings to supply the defect, but have not suc- 
ceeded in giving any assurance of apt restoration. 
In this edition, it is thought better to print the 
stanza in its mutilated condition. 

In 1753, at Stoke, the mother of Gray died, — 
a mother, memorable for the sorrows of her mar- 
ried life, for her devotion to her son, and by his 



64 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

filial piety. Over the vault in the churchyard at 
Stoke-Pogis, in Buckinghamshire, where, seventeen 
years afterwards, he ordered his own body to be 
laid, he placed the latter part of this inscription, 
— touching in its simplicity: 

IN THE VAULT BENEATH ARE DEPOSITED 

IN HOPE OF A JOYFUL RESURRECTION 

THE REMAINS OF 

MARY ANTROBUS. 

SHE DIED, UNMARRIED, NOV. V. MDCCXLIX. 
AGED LXVI. 

IN THE SAME PIOUS CONFIDENCE, 

BESIDE HER FRIEND AND SISTER 

HERE SLEEP THE REMAINS OF 

DOROTHY GRAY, 

WIDOW, THE CAREFUL TENDER MOTHER 

OF MANY CHILDREN, ONE OF WHOM ALONE 

HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO SURVIVE HER 

SHE DIED MARCH XI. MDCCLIII. 

AGED LXVII. 

When Gray in after life, in a letter to a friend, 
referred to his mother's death, he said : " It is 
thirteen years ago, and seems but as yesterday ; and 
every day I live, it sinks deeper into my heart." 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 65 

In 1754, Gray wrote the fragment to which has 
been given the title of "Ode to Vicissitude;" and 
in the following year, the "Ode on the Progress 
of Poetry" was finished, and "The Bard" begun. 
It was at this period that Walpole said that Gray 
was "in flower." The first of these poems was 
shadowed forth in the poet's mind in the following- 
sketch of his design, in a memorandum-book of 
1754 : " Contrast between the winter past and 
coming spring. — Joy, owing to that vicissitude. — 
Many who now feel that delight. — Sloth. — Envy. — 
Ambition. How much happier the rustic who feels 
it ; though he knows not how." It stands the 
most beautiful of Gray's fragments, and while one 
cannot but regret its incompleteness, it is more 
deplorable to look at it pieced, as it usually is 
printed, with Mason's tawdry additions. In this 
edition it is given as the hand of Gray left it. Sir 
Egerton Brydges, through whose multifarious works 
there is scattered much fine appreciation of both 
the strength and the weakness of Gray's character, 
has spoken of this poem as the "sublime lyrical 
fragment on 'Vicissitude,'" "in which" (he adds) 
" I do not hesitate to pronounce the following stanza 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



among the most perfect specimens which the poetry 
of any country can produce : 

'Yesterday the sullen year 

Saw the snowy whirlwind fly ; 
Mute was the music of the air, 
The herd stood drooping by : 
Their raptures now, that wildly flow, 
No yesterday nor morrow know; 
'Tis man alone, that joy descries 
With forward and reverted eyes/ " 

Gray's commonplace book contained the follow- 
ing entry, which is believed to have been the 
conception of another Ode : 

"All that men of power can do for men of 
genius is to leave them at their liberty, compared 
to birds that, when confined to a cage, do but re- 
gret the loss of their freedom in melancholy strains, 
and lose the luscious wildness and happy luxuri- 
ance of their notes, which used to make the woods 
resound." It is not known that a single poetical line 
of this conception was composed ; but the poet's 
biographers have pleased themselves with suggesting 
that the " Ode" might have been entitled " The 
Liberty of Genius," or " The Connection between 
Genius and Grandeur." 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 67 

In the summer of 1755, Gray's letters show that 
he was beginning to suffer from the approaches 
of his hereditary malady, the gout, with which 
the remainder of his life was troubled. In his 
pocket-journal, besides a diary of the weather and a 
calendar of observations on natural history, he kept 
that kind of record which is not a wise remem- 
brancer for one of nervous temperament and valetu- 
dinarian propensities, a regular account of the state 
of his health. The following entry has been given 
as a specimen of many others: "Insomnia crebra, 
atque expergiscenti surdus quidam doloris sensus ; 
frequens etiam in regione sterni oppressio, et car- 
dialgia gravis, fere sempiterna." 

In 1756 he removed from Peter-house, after a 
residence there of more than twenty years, to Pem- 
broke-hall, where his most intimate friends resided. 
This removal (as he speaks of it, " a sort of sera 
in a life so barren of events") was caused by the 
vexation and even alarm he suffered from the rude- 
ness and boisterous practical jokes of some riotous 
young men in the same college-building. His sen- 
sitiveness may possibly have been aggravated by 
the change in his health; but so serious were his 



68 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

apprehensions that, as appears from one of his 
letters, he desired a friend to procure him a rope- 
ladder with iron hooks, to be used in case of fire 
at night; and two iron-bars are still shown on the 
window of the chamber occupied by Gray, and 
which, it is said, he caused to be placed there. 
His tone of complaint in the letters is, however, 
quite amiable ; and it is pleasing to find him writ- 
ing from his new academic home (a recollection 
of his travels coming back to him) : "I am as 
quiet as in the Grande Chartreuse ; and everybody 
as civil as they could be to Mary of Valens" 
(the foundress of the College) "in person." 

In 1757 Gray went up to London, taking with 
him for publication his two new poems, — the ode 
on "The Progress of Poesy," and "The Bard." 
The latter ode, which had been laid aside unfinished 
for about two years, was resumed in consequence 
of a happy lyrical impulse caught directly from the 
tones of a harp, which the poet heard performed 
on with admirable effect by Parry, a blind Welch 
harper. In London he met Walpole, who thus 
mentions what passed : "I found Gray in town 
last week. He brought his two odes to be printed. 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands, and they 
are to be the first-fruits of my press." A thousand 
copies were accordingly printed at Strawberry-Hill. 
This edition is in quarto, with a view of Strawberry- 
Hill on the title. 

The reception of these two "Pindaric Odes" 
(as they were styled) bore a strong contrast to the 
prompt popularity that welcomed " The Elegy." 
The difference is to be accounted for both by the 
difference in the poems, and by the prevailing taste 
in poetry, — the power of the poet, and the weak- 
ness of the generation to which he sang. The 
odes were in a higher strain than Gray had there- 
tofore ventured on, and demanded a more strenuous 
effort of imagination in the reader than most men are 
willing to give to poetry, especially when, as during 
so much of the eighteenth century, the tone of 
poetry had been in harmony with habits of mental 
indolence. A generation accustomed to much that 
was no better than apathy or artificial sentiment 
needed time and discipline to teach them to know 
and to feel the truth and beauty of any poetic 
utterance that was more earnest and enthusiastic, 
and to win them to loftier moods of poetry. Ob- 



70 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

scurity was the burden of complaint, — characteristic 
of an age which about ten years before had turned 
away with worse neglect from the odes of Collins, 
whose life at this very time was drawing on darkly 
to its close. 

The popular prejudice against these poems of 
Gray's manifested itself in the parodies which fol- 
lowed them about three years after their publication, 
— the odes "To Obscurity" and "To Oblivion," the 
joint compositions of George Colman, the elder, and 
Robert Lloyd, — the first aimed at Gray, and the 
second at Mason. These satires, which, like the 
"Rejected Addresses" of a later day, had the usual 
success of clever parodies, had their origin probably 
in that small association, so busy with banter and 
burlesque, the "Nonsense Club," of which Cowper 
also was a member ; they were published in a quarto 
pamphlet, with a vignette in the title-page of an 
ancient poet safely seated and playing on his harp ; 
and at the end a tail-piece representing a modern 
poet in huge boots flung from a mountain by his 
Pegasus into the sea, and losing his tie-wig in the 
fall. Southey, in his Life of Cowper (chap, iii.), 
has well remarked: "Little did the two wits think 






MEMOIR OF GRAI. 71 

how small, in comparison with Gray, they would 
appear in the eyes of posterity ; and that ' The 
Bard,' which was then neglected by the public, 
would, in the course of the next generation, be- 
come the most popular ode in the English lan- 
guage. * * * It was easy for Gray, in the 
consciousness of his own superiority, to smile at 
the cleverness with which his manner had been 
imitated in a mock-lyric strain ; no disparagement 
is implied in such burlesque ; and one of his tem- 
per could more easily forgive the personal ridicule, 
as unjust as it was unbecoming, than the authors 
would forgive themselves for it, when they came 
to years of discretion. * * * What was per- 
sonal and injurious in these mock-lyrics is now so 
harmless, and what was always unexceptionable in 
them is so good (for they are among the very best 
of their kind), that whenever the works of Gray 
and Mason are, as they ought to be, conjointly 
published, it is to be hoped these pieces will find 
a place in the appendix, as a trophy to their 
fame." When Colman, in 1787, near thirty years 
afterwards, published a collection of his own writ- 
ings containing the parodies, he thus refers to them 



72 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

in the preface : " These odes were, indeed, a piece 
of boy's play with my schoolmate Lloyd, with whom 
they were written in concert, in those days when we 
had so little grace as to ridicule our poetic-masters, 
joking perhaps too licentiously with the prettinesses 
of one poet, and the obscurities of another. We 
were not, however, insensible to their real merits 
and excellencies, nor desirous to depreciate them." 
This subject ought not to be dismissed without 
an allusion to what is honourably illustrative both 
of Gray's personal and poetic character, — the man- 
ner in which he was aiFected by the want of success 
of these poems, and by the satirical parodies of 
them. The motto for the odes, selected from Pin- 
dar, showed that the poet did not hope for a ready 
reception by the multitude; writing to one of his 
friends, he quietly remarks : " The Sw«*w appear 
to be still fewer than even I expected." "Mr. 
Fox" (the first Lord Holland) "thinks, if the 
Bard sung his song but once over, King Edward 
could not possibly understand him. Indeed, I am 
of his opinion, and am certain, if he had sung it 
fifty times, it was impossible the king should know 
a jot the more about Edward the III. and Queen 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



Elizabeth, and Spenser and Milton, &c., but that 
was no reason wiry Mr. Fox should not." Writing 
to Mr. Hurd (afterwards Bishop of Litchfield), he 
says: "Even my friends tell me they" (the Odes) 
" do not succeed, and write me moving topics of 
consolation on that head. In short, I have heard 
of nobody but an actor" (Garrick) " and a doctor 
of divinity" (Warburton) "that profess their esteem 
for them. Oh yes, a lady of quality (a friend of 
Mason's), who is a great reader. She knew there 
was a compliment to Dryden, but never suspected 
there was any thing said about Shakspeare or Mil- 
ton, till it Avas explained to her, and wishes that 
there had been titles prefixed to tell what they 
were about." In all that he wrote or said, as far 
as it has been preserved, there appears a tranquil 
and unaffected humour indicating that placid self- 
possession which is an attribute and a glory of 
genius in its period of popular neglect. 

With the same playful composure he regarded 
the parodies. He wrote to Mason, "I have sent 
you a bloody satire written against no less persons 
than you and I by name." * * "Mr. Colman * * 
makes very tolerable fun with me, where I under- 



74 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



stand him (which is not everywhere) ; but seems 
more angry with you. Lest people should not 
understand the hum our of the thing (which, indeed, 
to do they must have our lyricisms at their finger 
ends), letters come out in Lloyd's Evening Post 
to tell them who and what it was that he meant, 
and says it is like to produce a great combustion 
in the literary world. So if you have any mind 
to combustle about it, well and good; for me, I am 
neither so literary nor so combustible." To Dr. 
Wharton, he writes : "* * there was a satire printed 
against me and Mason jointly ; it is called Two 
Odes : the one is inscribed to Obscurity (that is 
me), the other to Oblivion. * -x- The writer is a 
Mr. Colman, who published the Connoisseur, nephew 
to the late Lady Bath, and a friend of Garrick's. 
I believe his odes sell no more than mine did, for I 
saw a heap of them lie in a bookseller's window, who 
recommended them to me as a very pretty thing." 
When the "Pindaric Odes" were again printed in 
an edition of his poems, about eleven years after- 
wards, Gray added some notes, "partly," he re- 
marks, in one of his letters, " from justice (to 
acknowledge the debt where I had borrowed any 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 75 



thing), partly from ill-temper, just to tell the gentle 
reader that Edward I. was not Oliver Cromwell, 
nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of Endor ;" and 
again he says, "As to the notes, I do it out of 
spite, because the public did not understand the 
two odes (which I have called Pindaric), though 
the first was not very dark, and the second alluded 
to a few common facts, to be found in any six- 
penny history of England, by way of question and 
answer, for the use of children." 

While Gray did not suffer the cold reception of 
these odes seriously to affect his happiness, or his 
own fair estimate of them, it did probably dis- 
courage further poetical effort ; for certainly thir- 
teen years followed without the production of any 
poem worthy of his better fame. In 1760 his 
attention was attracted to the Erse fragments and 
fabrications, published by Macpherson, as the poems 
of Ossian, and also to some ancient Welsh poetry 
translated into Latin. Although perplexed with 
the question of the authenticity of these poems, 
Gray was strongly affected by them, and, it is some- 
what surprising to say, was anxious to give his 
faith to them. His admiration so far revived his 



76 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

enthusiasm as to cause him to resume poetical 
composition in the two translations or paraphrases 
from the Norse tongue, " The Fatal Sisters" and 
"Vegtam's Kivitha, or the Descent of Odin;" and 
in the poems from the Welsh, "The Triumphs 
of Owen" and "The Death of Hoel." Gray him- 
self was but indifferently satisfied with these at- 
tempts, which he published for the special purpose 
of supplying a space made vacant in the edition 
of his poems published in 1769. He gives this 
account of the matter to Beattie : " When I was in 
London last spring, Dodsley, the bookseller, asked 
my leave to reprint, in a smaller form, all I ever 
published ; to which I consented ; and added, that 
I would send him a few explanatory notes ; and 
if he would omit entirely the Long Story (which 
was never meant for the public, and only suffered 
to appear in that pompous edition because of Mr. 
Bentley's designs, which were not intelligible with- 
out it), I promised to send him something else to 
print instead of it, lest the bulk of so small a 
volume should be reduced to nothing at all. * * 
The additions * * are imitations of two pieces of 
old Norwegian poetry, in which there was a wild 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 77 



spirit that struck me ; but for my paraphrases I 
cannot say much." To Walpole he gives an equally 
characteristic and more familiar account : " Dodsley 
told me in the spring that the plates from Mr. 
Bentley's designs were worn out, and he wanted 
to have them copied and reduced to a smaller scale 
for a new edition. I dissuaded him from so silly 
an expense, and desired he would put in no orna- 
ments at all. The Long Story was to be totally 
omitted, as its only use (that of explaining the 
prints) was gone ; but to supply the place of it in 
bulk, lest my ivories should be mistaken for the 
works of a flea or a pismire, I promised to send him 
an equal weight of poetry or prose ; so since my 
return hither" (Cambridge) "I have put up about 
two ounces of stuff, viz., the Fatal Sisters, the 
Descent of Odin (of both which you had copies), a 
bit of something from the Welsh, and certain little 
notes. * * # This is literally all ; and with all this 
I shall be but a shrimp of an author." Walpole's 
admiration faltered at these poems; writing to Mr. 
Montagu, he said: "Gray has added to his poems 
three ancient odes from Norway and Wales. The 
subjects of the two first are grand and picturesque, 



78 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

and there is Ms genuine vein in them ; but these 
are not interesting, and do not, like his other poems, 
touch any passion ; our human feelings, which he 
masters at will in his fine pieces, are not here 
affected. Who can care through what horrors a 
Runic savage arrived at all the joys and glories 
they could conceive, — the supreme felicity of booz- 
ing ale out of the skull of an enemy in Odin's 
Hall?" 

In 1761, Gray wrote the Epitaph on Sir William 
Peere Williams, who fell in the course of the pro- 
tracted and desperate hostilities on the coast of 
Brittany, which preceded the conquest of Bellisle. 
With what reluctance Gray put his hand even to 
so simple an effort in verse, and how poorly he 
satisfied himself with the result, appear from a 
letter to Mason: "Mr. Montagu (as I guess at 
your instigation) has earnestly desired me to write 
some lines to be put on a monument which he means 
to erect at Bellisle. It is a task I do not love, 
knowing Sir William Williams so slightly as I did ; 
but he is so friendly a person, and his affections 
seemed to me so real, that I could not refuse him. 
I have sent him the following verses, which I neither 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 79 

like myself, nor will he, I doubt ; however, I have 
showed him that I wished to oblige him." 

The quiet routine of Gray's life, during this 
unproductive period of it, was varied by few events 
or change of employment. In 1757 he declined 
the office of Poet-Laureate, which was oifered to 
him on the death of Cibber, whose name is coupled 
with his in the satirical line, which speaks of the 
laurel as 

" Profaned by Cibber and contemned by Gray." 

He was actuated, there is reason to think, not so 
much by contempt, as by an unwillingness, which 
appears throughout his literary career, to being 
put forward publicly in any thing like a professional 
position as a poet. His good judgment led him 
rather to the hope that an ancient poetic honour 
might be retrieved from ridicule, — a hope that was 
fulfilled in the last century, when the laureateship 
was given to Thomas Warton, and lately when it took 
a higher dignity from Southey and from Wordsworth. 
Gray, writing to Mason, said: "If. you hear who 
it is given to, pray let me know ; for I interest 
myself a little in the history of it, and rather 



80 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

wish somebody may accept it that will retrieve 
the credit of the thing, if it be retrievable, or 
ever had any credit. Rowe was, I think, the last 
man of character that had it ; Eusden was a person 
of great hopes in his youth, though at last he 
turned out a drunken parson ; Dryden was as 
disgraceful to the office, from his character, as 
the poorest scribbler could have been from his 
verses." 

In 1758 Gray gives this description of his life : 
"The drift of my present studies is to know, wher- 
ever I am, what lies within reach that may be 
worth seeing ; whether it be building, ruin, park, 
garden, prospect, picture, or. monument : to whom 
it does or has belonged, and what has been the 
characteristic and taste of different ages." He 
was then engaged in compiling " A Catalogue of 
the Antiquities, Houses, &c, in England and 
Wales," which, after his death, was printed for 
private distribution. Architecture was also one 
of his special studies, to which he applied himself 
with much of the scientific research and artistic 
feeling which have been displayed more effectively 
in the ecclesiology of his countrymen of a later 






MEMOIR OF GRAY. 81 

generation. When the British Museum, which had 
been founded by Parliament on the several private 
collections of Cotton, Sloane, and Harley, was opened 
in January, 1759, Gray went to London to explore 
the manuscript treasures. He writes thence : " I 
live in the Museum, and write volumes of antiquity. 
# * I am up to my ears." 

It was not until he was about fifty years of age 
that Gray began that series of tours in Great 
Britain, of which there is so much pleasing record 
in his letters and diaries, and which, one cannot 
but believe, would, at an earlier part of his career, 
have exercised a most salutary influence upon his 
character, both as a man and a poet. In 1764 he 
went to the sea-side on the south of England, in 
the neighbourhood of the Isle of Wight ; and after- 
wards visited Salisbury and Stonehenge. In the 
summer of 1765 he took a journey into Scotland, 
where at Edinburgh his acquaintance with Beattie 
began ; he made an excursion into the Highlands 
as far as the pass of Killikrankie, and, describing 
his tour to Dr. Wharton, says in conclusion : " In 
short, since I saw the Alps, I have seen nothing 
sublime till now." He spent the spring-season of 



82 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

the next year in Kent, where his eye enjoyed the 
garden-like beauties of the landscape of the more 
cultivated region of England. It was then that 
he threw off at Denton the "Impromptu" stanzas 
on the house which Lord Holland had built at 
Kingsgate, in imitation of Cicero's Eormian villa 
at Baiae. In one of his letters, he says : " I did 
not go to Kingsgate, because it belonged to my 
Lord Holland ; but to Ramsgate I did, and so to 
Sandwich, and Deal, and Dover, and Folkstone, 
and Hythe, all along the coast, very delightful." 
The summer of 1767 was spent by Gray in the 
north of England. After a few weeks of confine- 
ment by ill-health in London, in the autumn he 
returned to his quiet abode at Cambridge, — where 
he writes, in midwinter : " Alas ! I am a sum- 
mer-bird, and can only sit drooping till the sun 
returns." 

In the following year Gray received the appoint- 
ment to the Professorship of Modern History in 
the University of Cambridge, — the most distin- 
guished tribute which, in life, was given to his 
talents and learning. Six years before, "being," 
as he says, " cockered and spirited up by some 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 83 

friends," he had applied to Lord Bute for the same 
Regius professorship ; but was little surprised at 
an unfavourable answer. When, after the several 
changes in the ministry at that period, the Duke 
of Grafton had become first Lord of the Treasury, 
the professorship was, in 1768, made a gift to Gray 
under the most gratifying circumstances. He thus 
describes them to Beattie : " The middle of last 
summer his majesty was pleased to appoint me 
Regius Professor of Modern History in this Uni- 
versity ; it is the best thing the crown has to 
bestow (on a layman) here ; the salary is <£400 
per annum ; but what enhances the value of it to 
me is, that it was bestowed without being asked. 
The person who held it before me died on the 
Sunday, and on Wednesday following the Duke of 
Grafton wrote me a letter, to say that the king 
offered me this office, with many additional expres- 
sions of kindness on his grace's part, to whom I 
am but little known, and whom I have not seen, 
either before or since he did me this favour. In- 
stances of a benefit so nobly conferred, I believe, 
are rare ; and therefore I tell you of it as a thing 
that does honour, not only to me, but to the min- 



84 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

ister. As I lived here before from choice, I shall 
now continue to do so from obligation." 

If this appointment had come earlier in life, or 
when his health was unimpaired, it might have ex- 
erted a decided influence on Gray's life, by giving 
to it a more definite purpose. It came, however, 
too late. In justice to the memory of Gray, it 
must be added that he proved his sense of official 
duty by preparing a plan of his inauguration speech, 
on the preparatory and auxiliary studies for a 
course of Modern History ; he also planned regu- 
lations of instruction in the department. The 
inaugural speech was to be in Latin, and the part 
which he wrote is preserved. In adding this to 
the story of Gray's unaccomplished labours, we can 
only regret that circumstances were not more 
propitious for the qualities which he would have 
brought to the exposition of History — zeal in his- 
toric research, impatience of secondary and super- 
ficial authorities, sagacity, and imaginative vision 
of the past, — and which might have given him the 
celebrity that, since his day, has been gained by 
Smyth in the same department of the same Uni- 
versity, and by Arnold at Oxford. 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 85 

Although the appointment was unproductive of 
its peculiarly appropriate results, it was rendered 
memorable, in its indirect influences, in the prompt- 
ing of that poem which was grandly to close Gray's 
poetic life, — the Ode on the Installation of the Duke 
of Grafton to the Chancellorship of the University 
of Cambridge, to which, in 1769, he was elected 
on the death of the Duke of Newcastle. Grati- 
tude for the unsolicited kindness of his patron was 
the happy inspiration : " I thought myself," he wrote 
to Beattie, "bound in gratitude to his grace, un- 
asked, to take upon me the task of writing these 
verses, which are usually set to music on this 
occasion. I do not think them worth sending you, 
because they are by nature doomed to live but a 
single day; or, if their existence is prolonged be- 
yond that date, it is only by means of newspaper 
parodies and witless criticisms. This sort of abuse 
I had reason to expect, but did not think it worth 
while to avoid." To another correspondent he says: 
"I did not intend the duke should have heard me 
till he could not help it. You are desired to make 
the best excuses you can to his grace for the liberty 
I have taken of praising him to his face ; but as 



86 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



somebody was necessarily to do this, I did not see 
why Gratitude should sit silent and leave it to Ex- 
pectation to sing, who certainly would have sung, 
and that a gorge deploy ee upon such an occasion." 
It is pleasing to think that a poem, prompted by 
so pure a motive, and of the permanence of which 
the poet had such humble expectations, should have 
gained and kept so true a fame, and that the last 
sounds of his lyric song should have been among 
the noblest. Mr. Hallam's calm judgment has ap- 
plauded " that beautiful stanza, where he has made 
the founders of Cambridge pass before our eyes, 
like shadows over a magic glass." (Constit. Hist. i. 
p. 49.) And Coleridge, who was disposed to look 
rather unfavourably on the other lyrics, as frigid and 
artificial, said : " I think there is something very ma- 
jestic in Gray's Installation Ode." It is another 
specimen of that admirable form of historical lyrical 
poetry, which the poet had achieved in "The Bard;" 
and was in harmony with his new duties in the ap- 
pointment, which was the origin of the poem. The 
Installation Ode, as its title, " Ode for Music," 
shows, was set to music, — the poet himself giving 
counsel in the work, as on a former occasion, when, 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 87 

on the proposal of a pupil of Handel's to set " The 
Bard" to music, Gray gave his own directions for 
the overture. 

In the autumn of 1769, Gray made his tour to 
the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, — that 
beautiful region, then little known, even to his own 
countrymen, but which in later times has been the 
life-long home of great poets, who with the bodily 
and spiritual vision beholding the beauties of earth 
and sky there, and making them famous and fami- 
liar, have hence taught their fellow-beings through- 
out the world a deeper insight into God's dealings 
with the soul of man by the agency of Nature. 
Of Gray's tour to the lakes, a more complete and 
pleasing record is preserved than of his other tra- 
vels, in the journal which he kept and communicated 
to Dr. Wharton. 

In 1770 Gray planned more travels, "having," 
he said, " never found my spirits lower than at 
present ; and feeling that motion and change of 
scene is absolutely necessary to me." To his young 
Swiss friend, Bonstetten, he writes : " Your letter 
has made me happy, as happy as so gloomy, so 
solitary a being as I am, is capable of being made. 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



* As often as I read over your truly kind letter, 
written long since from London, I stop at these 
words : ' La mort qui peut glacer nos bras avant 
qu'ils soient entrelace'es.'" In the summer of that 
year he made what he describes as " a six weeks' 
ramble through five of the most beautiful counties 
in the kingdom," in the course of which he viewed 
with especial delight the scenery of the river Wye, 
"the sylvan Wye — the wanderer among the woods," 
and the ruins of Tintern Abbey, and spent a short 
time at Oxford, "with," as he says, "great satis- 
faction." 

This was Gray's last tour. In 1771 he had some 
hope of a visit to Switzerland; but the uncertain 
restoration produced by travelling, and the strictly 
temperate habits of his life, could not check the 
onward progress of his disease. After spending a 
little while in London and at Kensington, he re- 
turned to Cambridge; and on the 24th of July, 
while at dinner in the college-hall, was seized 
with an attack of gout in the stomach, which was 
followed by convulsions, and on the evening of the 
30th he expired, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. 
One of the friends, who watched by his death- 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 



bed, writes that he was sensible of his approaching 
death, and all was "peaceable and calm." His 
body was removed from Pembroke-Hall, and buried 
in obedience to the following article in his will, 
which was dated the 2d of July, 1770 : " First, I 
do desire that my body may be deposited in the 
vault, made by my late dear mother, in the church- 
yard of Stoke-Pogeis, near Stough in Buckingham- 
shire, by her remains." The tomb is at the end 
of the chancel ; and the Rev. Mr. Mitford, in the 
biography of Gray, published at Eton in 1847, 
remarks : "It is singular, that no tomb or monu- 
ment has been erected to his memory ; a small 
stone, inserted lately in the wall of the church, 
is the only memorial which indicates the spot where 
the poet's dust reposes." 

A monument, in Westminster Abbey, was erected 
in memory of Gray, in 1778, by his friend and 
biographer Mason, with a metrical inscription from 
his pen. In 1799, a cenotaph " in honour of 
Thomas Gray" was placed by Mr. Penn on 
his grounds in Stoke Park, at a short distance 
from the churchyard, and in sight of the poet's 
grave. 

8* 



90 MEMOIR OF 6EAY. 

Of Gray's personal appearance no description 
Las been handed down, either by his first biogra- 
pher or any of the other friends who were familiar 
with it. There is no portrait which pictures with 
authority his face in adult life. For this edition, 
the earliest picture of him, — that by Richardson, 
taken when he was fifteen years old, — has been 
preferred, both as the most agreeable likeness, and 
as entitled to most esteem from the reputation of 
the artist. 

In this biography of Gray, it has been my aim 
so to compose it that the poet's character might 
be apparent therein, without comment. The course 
of his life is as well known as we need desire it 
to be, for it quickly found an affectionate and 
honest chronicler ; and what was left untouched 
by Mason has been well supplied by the zealous 
industry of later biographers. Indeed, the poet's 
own letters contain the story of his life. On that 
life there rests no stain of moral reproach. He 
was innocent, modest, gentle ; and while, content 
and happy in unambitious seclusion, he shunned 
the large fellowship of men, he had qualities 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 91 

which caused the friends, who knew him best, to 
cling to him fondly and faithfully. Of Gray's 
religious principles and practice much is not di- 
rectly known ; the reserve in his character pre- 
vented those subjects being prominent, either in 
his conversation or correspondence; and his friends 
have said little. It must be remembered, that the 
age in which he and his friends lived was a hike- 
warm era of the Church of England, — nay, worse, 
it was an age of dull and torpid faith. It was 
just at the time when Gray was passing from boy- 
hood to manhood, that Bishop Butler, in 1730, 
wrote that dismal sentence in the preface to "The 
Analogy": "It is come, I know not how, to be 
taken for granted by many persons, that Chris- 
tianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry ; but 
that it is now at length discovered to be ficti- 
tious ; and, accordingly, they treat it as if in the 
present age this were an agreed point among all 
people of discernment ; and nothing remained but 
to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and 
ridicule, as it were, by way of reprisals, for its 
having so long interrupted the pleasures of the 
world." The soul of Gray dwelt far above such 



92 MEMOIR OP GRAY. 

spiritual debasement. Although devotional fervour 
was not an element of his character, it was very 
manifest, and often so, that he held in abhorrence 
the folly and vice of the insolent scepticism of the 
times, come from what quarter it might, — whether 
English, Scotch, French, or Prussian infidelity. He 
saw, and took pains to teach others to see, how 
shallow was the poor philosophy of Shaftesbury and 
of Bolingbroke; of the Scotch epicurean he said: 
" I have always thought David Hume a pernicious 
writer, and believe he has done as much mischief 
here as he has in his own country;" — of the royal 
infidel he spoke with a wise contempt (in 1760) : 
" The town are reading the King of Prussia's poetry 
(Le Philosophe sans souci), and I have done like 
the town ; they do not seem so sick of it as I am. 
It is all the scum of Voltaire and Bolingbroke, the 
crambe recocta of our worst Freethinkers, tossed 
up in German-French rhyme." It was with a 
deeper feeling of aversion that he regarded the 
ribald French blasphemer, of whom he said, in one 
emphatic phrase, in one of his letters: "Voltaire 
I detest." An illustration of this feeling has been 
given by his friend, the Rev. Norton Nicholls, in 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 93 

his "Reminiscences of Gray": "The great object 
of his detestation was Voltaire, whom he seemed to 
know, even beyond what had appeared of him, and 
to see with the eye of a prophet in his future mis- 
chiefs; he said to me, 'No one knows the mischief 
that man will do.' When I took leave of him, and 
saw him for the last time, at his lodging in Jermyn 
street, before I went abroad, in the beginning of 
June, 1771, he said: 'I have one thing to beg of 
you, which you must not refuse.' I replied, 'You 
know you have only to command, what is it?' 'Do 
not go to see Voltaire,' and then he added what I 
have written above. I said, ' Certainly, I will not ; 
but what could a visit from me signify?' 'Every 
tribute to such a man signifies.''' (Gray's Works, 
Mitford's Aldine edit. vol. v. p. 32.) 

The poetical character of Gray needs now no 
comment. The foundation, narrow as it is, on which 
his reputation was built, has borne it well for more 
than a century. There is probably no instance in 
the history of English literature, in which distinc- 
tion was gained by such scant production ; and 
yet no one can complain that Gray's reputation 
is disproportioned to his deserts. It is a reputa- 



94 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

tion which would be a paradox on any other prin- 
ciple than that his poems, limited though they be 
in number, gave space enough to show true imagina- 
tive power, and have been to several generations 
a source of that kind of delight which it belongs 
to genuine poetry to give. 

The student of English poetry who judges most 
justly of Gray's character as a poet will not be 
disposed to question his reputation or to disparage 
it ; but another feeling will rise up, somewhat in 
the form of complaint, in the thought that Gray 
might have been a much greater poet, — that he 
ought to have achieved that higher order of repu- 
tation which is fame. Speculations of this kind 
have something vain in them; for, unless the life 
be closed too early, or forced from its natural course 
by sadly adverse influences, it may be said, that 
what a man does is the measure of what he can 
do. In reading Gray's poetry, however, and in 
studying his natural endowments, and following 
the large circuit of his acquirements and the 
course of his life, there rises up to our thoughts 
the vision of a greater poet, which we cannot but 
fancy ought to have been in him a reality. Mason 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 95 

said of him, after his death, that "from early 
chagrin and disappointment, Gray had imbibed a 
disinclination to employ his talents beyond the 
sphere of self-satisfaction and improvement." This 
is language more amiably than wisely apologetic. 
The work of human life is not to be made de- 
pendent, at our will, upon our lives being fenced 
in from pain and sorrow, and the evils that life 
is heir to. The story of Gray's life justifies no 
such apology. After making the largest allowances 
for the injury done by the dismal recollections of 
his father, and the lesser wrong of the quarrel with 
his youthful fellow traveller, — the commonest of 
life's disappointments, — there is nothing to show 
why Gray's life should not have been happy. In 
truth, it was a happy life. He never knew poverty, 
but had means ample enough to secure the home 
and the occupation that were congenial to him ; 
and, at every period of his life, he was blessed 
with friends who were dear and true to him. If 
an early sorrow struck the poet's sensitive heart, 
there was in after-life much more than the healing 
hand of time to cure the wound ; even if the early 
sorrow had weighed longer and heavier, it would 



96 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

have been a poor plea for inaction. It has been 
wisely said, that "if the early direction given to 
life has been ever so unfortunate, a man's folding 
his hands over it in melancholy mood, and suffering 
himself to be made a puppet by it, is a sadly weak 
proceeding. Most thoughtful men have probably 
some dark fountains in their souls, by the side of 
which, if there were time, and it were decorous, 
they could let their thoughts sit down and wail in- 
definitely." (Friends in Council, Part I. p. 198.) 
If the life of Gray be compared with the lives of 
other men, illustrious in English letters, the ad- 
verse circumstances of it fade away into an insig- 
nificance which makes the comparison a reproach 
to him. The sorrows that fell on the path of 
Spenser did not silence his spiritual song ; the 
gloom which sublimely enveloped the old age of Mil- 
ton, — "darkness before and danger's voice behind," 
— was no temptation to sullen speechlessness ; the 
obloquy which for years was heaped on Wordsworth 
oppressed not his high-souled minstrelsy; and the 
exquisite humour of Charles Lamb was not quenched 
by the fearful tragedy of his early manhood, and the 
awful affliction that hung over his whole life. 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 97 

Gray's dejection had its source, not so much in 
outward causes as in the fountain that is within, — 
a constitutional tendency to low spirits, which he 
often yielded to, and which he evaded rather than 
overcame. He never learned a later poet's truer 
wisdom, that 

"A cheerful spirit is what the Muses love, 
A soaring spirit is their prime delight." 

Even before his health was impaired, he said (in 
1758), " High spirits and gaiety overpower me, and 
entirely take away mine." Gray's scheme of life 
was innocent and in itself rational ; but it was in- 
adequate to his powers, and lower than a better 
faith in his own impulses would have dictated. He 
was studious, zealous of a varied lore, and devoted 
to knowledge with no mean or mercenary motive, 
but for its own sake. His occupation was pure 
and intelligent employment, for his own happiness; 
but it was not strenuous and dutiful culture of his 
talents, for the happiness and good of mankind. 
" To find one's self business," he said, " I am 
persuaded, is the great art of life : * * some spirit, 
something of genius (more than common) is re- 



08 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

quired, to teach a man how to employ himself ; I 
say a man ; for women, commonly speaking, never 
feel this distemper; they have always something 
to do ; time hangs not on their hands (unless they 
be fine ladies) ; a variety of small inventions and 
occupations fill up the void, and their eyes are 
never open in vain." Again: "I am persuaded 
the whole matter is, to have always something going 
forward. Happy they that can create a rose-tree 
or erect a honeysuckle ; that can watch the brood 
of a hen, or see a fleet of their own ducklings 
launch into the water!" This is good teaching in 
the minor morals of life, and by virtue of it, many 
a man and many a woman spend their days in 
harmless cheerfulness and secluded usefulness ; but 
when life is endowed with higher powers, higher 
and larger functions become a duty. Creative 
energy is bound to find its fitting work, and the 
aim of it should be the welfare of humanity, and, 
in its loftiest aspirations, the glory of God. Gray's 
pursuits, for the most part, looked not beyond the 
storing or the refreshing of his own mind, — recrea- 
tion in its highest and most honourable form ; but 
yet, inasmuch as it stopped at that point, having 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 99 



the taint (loth as one is to say so) of a refined 
selfishness. His industry, zealous and untiring as 
it was, needed the guidance of a more practical 
philosophy, and still more of a more strenuous sense 
of duty, for lack of which his labours were too 
often like those parts of the old mansion-house at 
Stoke, which his own line describes as 



" passages that lead to nothing." 

Besides his learning in pure literature in its various 
branches — both ancient and modern, — Gray had an 
accurate knowledge of architecture and the fine arts, 
and of music ; he was a master of heraldry and 
archaeology ; and in the natural sciences — botany 
and zoology — he was a successful student, both 
from books and from nature. But these multifarious 
acquirements were amusements, which gave him in- 
deed, and perhaps justly, the credit of being the 
most learned English poet since Milton ; but which 
have left no substantial results beyond notes and 
"papers" on the several- sciences, — comments on 
Greek philosophers and dramatists, — and a scheme 
of a " History of English Poetry," for which he was 
eminently qualified, but which he readily relinquished 



100 MEMOIK OF GRAY. 

on hearing that Warton was engaged on a similar 
work. 

Gray said of Mason, that he read too little and 
wrote too much. Of himself, the reverse may be said 
with equal truth. He would have been a happier 
man in writing more. To Walpole, he remarked : 
" Whenever the humour takes me I will write ; be- 
cause I like it, and because I like myself better 
when I do so." The happiness would doubtless 
have been heightened, if that which was humour 
had been disciplined into habit. Not only might 
the poet have thus been a happier man, but each 
poetic power in him would have gained strength 
from the free discipline which belongs to the thought- 
ful use of any faculty. His fine use of the English 
language, which has made so many of his lines and 
expressions familiar in their beauty, might have 
risen to that admirable freedom and peculiar mas- 
tery which is one of the attributes of poets of the 
highest order. 

Gray needed a freer communion with his fellow- 
beings and with nature. There is, indeed, a kind 
of character, for which a cloistered academic se- 
clusion may be salutary discipline ; but there is 



MEMOIR OF GRAT. 101 

another description of character, which needs larger 
intercourse with the world, to save it from that 
fastidiousness and daintiness which is engendered 
by the self-indulgence of mere taste for literature 
and art, and which borders on effeminacy. Ten- 
derly as Gray, both in verse and prose, touches 
on human nature, combined with that delicacy were 
a manliness and good sense which, with larger cul- 
ture, might have expanded into a higher philosophy 
of human principles and passions. His moral and 
historical odes show the wisdom he might have 
brought to the poetic dealing with humanity. 

The freer communion with nature which, for 
bodily health, Gray sought in his later years, had 
it been earlier, and in the dutiful and believing spirit 
of poetical culture, might have placed him among 
our great descriptive poets of nature. His poems 
show (and often in the fine power of a single line) 
with what poetic truthfulness he observed and re- 
produced the sights and sounds of nature ; and, still 
more, that he could invest the material world with 
that spirituality which the moral imagination creates 
or discovers. His letters and diaries also show, when 
he went forth from what he playfully calls "the 



102 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

quiet ugliness of Cambridge," with what true poetic 
vision he beheld natural objects — the humbler as 
well as the mightier — and that his cloistered, book- 
ish life had not destroyed his susceptibility to either 
the more delicate or the stronger influences of na- 
ture. It is in the half-careless addition of a post- 
script to a letter, that with such grandeur and truth 
he describes an ocean sunrise ; ■ having reached the 
sea-coast after travelling before daybreak, with "the 
moon shining through a dark and misty autumnal 
air," he adds: "I saw the clouds and dark vapours 
open gradually to right and left, rolling over one 
another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide (as it 
flowed gently in upon the sands) first whitening, then 
slightly tinged with gold and blue ; and, all at once, 
a little line of insufferable brightness, that (before 
I can write these five words) was grown to half an 
orb, and now to a whole one, too glorious to be 
distinctly seen. It is very odd it makes no figure 
on paper ; yet, I shall remember it as long as the 
sun, or at least as long as I endure." In a letter 
from Stoke, he adds a postscript, simply to say : 
"Every thing resounds with the wood-lark and 
robin ; and the voice of the sparrow is heard in 



MEMOIR OF GRAY. 103 

our land." The journal of his tour to the lakes 
shows, besides his admiration of the grander spec- 
tacles, that he was observant of the delicate pheno- 
mena of a mountain-lake region, such as the night 
voice of the lesser water-falls — what, in the descrip- 
tive poetry of a later day, a dweller among the 
mountains has sung of, as " the unremitting voice 
of nightly streams" — "that voice of unpretending 
harmony," when 

"A soft and lulling sound is heard 
Of streams inaudible by day." 

In the history of English poetry, Gray occupies 
a place in that transitional era of the middle of 
the eighteenth century, between the artificial school 
of poetry of the followers and imitators of Pope, 
and the revival which, beginning with Cowper and 
Burns at the close of the century, has been achieved 
by the greater poets of the nineteenth century. 
Gray shares with Thomson the honour of leading the 
way to the restoration of English poetry to nature 
again. In this work, he was strengthened, more 
than Thomson, by the assurance which his learning 
gave, that the revival was but a return to the teach- 



104 MEMOIR OF GRAY. 

ings of the earlier and greatest of the English 
poets. 

The authorities which have been relied on in this 
memoir of Gray, are chiefly his own letters ; the 
Life by Mason ; Matthias's Edition of his Works ; 
the Rev. Mr. Mitford's Aldine Edition, with the 
excellent biography prefixed ; and also Mr. Mitford's 
later biography of the poet, contained in the illus- 
trated Eton Edition of the Poems. To Mr. Mitford, 
the author of the latest and most complete of the 
biographies, peculiarly belongs the distinction of 
being the best and most judicious guardian of Gray's 
memory. It appears to have been for many years 
a labour of love to him ; and the large research he 
has bestowed on it, and the kindly wisdom with 
which he has treated the subject, place every reader 
of Gray's poems and letters under obligations to 
him. 

The notes, illustrative of the poems, will be found 
in this edition at the close of the volume. 

Philadelphia, July 1, 1850. 



COMMENDATORY POEMS. 



iotmrt 



BY THE REV. JOHN MITFORD, M.A. 



)tan;a0 



BY THE REV. JOHN MOULTRIE, M.A. 



SONNET. 



A lonely man he was from whom these lays 
Flow'd in his cloister'd musings : He in scorn 
Held them, the unfeeling multitude, who, born 
For deeds of nobler purpose, their rife days 
Waste amidst fraudful industry, to raise 
Inglorious wealth. — But He, life's studious morn 
Gave to the Muse, so best might he adorn 
His thoughtful brow with never-dying bays. 
And well the Muse repaid him. She hath given 
An unsubstantial world of richer fee ; 

107 



108 SONNET. 



High thoughts, unchanging visions, that the leaven 
Of earth partake not ; — Rich then must he be, 
Who of this cloudless world, this mortal heaven 
Possesseth in his right the sovereignty. 



STANZAS. 



SEED-time and harvest, summer's genial heat, 
And winter's nipping cold, and night and day 
Their stated changes, as of old, repeat, 
And must, until this world shall pass away ; 
While nations rise, and flourish, and decay, 
And mighty revolutions shake the earth, 
Filling men's hearts with trouble and dismay ; 
And war and rapine, pestilence and dearth, 
To many a monstrous shape of pain and wo give birth. 

10 109 



110 STANZAS. 



II. 

But still, while states and empires wax and wane, 
And busy generations fret and die. 
The face of Nature doth unchanged remain ; 
Small token is there in the earth or sky 
Of dissolution or mortality , 

But streams are bright, and meadows flowery still, 
And woods retain their ancient greenery, 
And shade and sunshine chequer dale and hill, 
Though all the abodes of men be rife with wrong and ill. 



in. 

There is no feature of thy fair domain 
Which of decay or change displays a trace, 
No charm of thine but doth undimm'd remain, 
Thou my boyhood's blest abiding-place, 
While five-and-twenty years with stealthy pace 
Have cool'd thy son's rash blood, and thinn'd his hair : 
The old expression lingers on thy face, 
The spirit of past days un quench' d is there, 
While all things else are changed, and changing every- 
where. 



STANZAS. Ill 



IV. 

And through thy spacious courts, and o'er thy green 
Irriguous meadows, swarming as of old, 
A youthful generation still is seen, 
Of birth, of mind, of humour manifold : 
The grave, the gay, the timid, and the bold, — 
The noble nursling of the palace hall,— 
The merchant's offspring, heir to wealth untold, — 
The pale-eyed youth, whom learning's spells enthral, 
Within thy cloisters meet, and love thee, one and all. 



Young art thou still, and young shalt ever be 
In spirit, as thou wast in years gone by ; 
The present, past, and future blend in thee, 
Rich as thou art in names which cannot die, 
And youthful hearts already beating high 
To emulate the glories won of yore ; 
That days to come may still the past outvie, 
And thy bright roll be lengthen'd more and more 
Of statesman, bard, and sage well versed in noblest 
lore. 



112 STANZAS. 



VI. 

Ah ! well, I ween, knew He what worth is thine, 
How deep a debt to thee his genius owed, — 
The Statesman, who of late, in life's decline, 
Of public care threw off the oppressive load, 
While yet his unquench'd spirit gleam'd and glow'd 
With the pure light of Greek and Roman song, — 
That gift, in boyish years by thee bestow'd, 
And cherish' d, loved, and unforgotten long 
While cares of state press'd round in close continuous 
throng. 

VII. 

Not unprepared was that majestic mind, 
By food and nurture once derived from thee, 
To shape and sway the fortunes of mankind ; 
And by sagacious counsel and decree 
Direct and guide Britannia's destiny — 
Her mightiest ruler o'er the subject East : 
Yet in his heart of hearts no joy had he 
So pure, as when, from empire's yoke released, 
To thee once more he turned with love that nevei 
ceased. 



STANZAS. 113 



VIII. 

Fain would he cast life's fleshly burden down 
Where its best hours were spent, and sink to rest, 
Weary of greatness, sated with renown, 
Like a tired child upon his mother's breast : 
Proud may'st thou be of that his fond bequest, 
Proud that, within thy consecrated ground, 
He sleeps amidst the haunts he loved the best ; 
Where many a well-known, once-familiar sound 
Of water, earth, and air for ever breathes around. 



IX. 

Such is thine empire over mightiest souls 
Of men who wield earth's sceptres ; such thy spell 
Which until death, and after death controls 
Hearts which no fear could daunt, no force could 
What marvel then, if softer spirits dwell [quell : 
With fondest love on thy remember'd sway ? 
What marvel, if the hearts of poets swell, 
Recording at life's noon, with grateful lay, 
How sweetly in thy shades its morning slipp'd away ? 



114 STANZAS. 



X. 

Such tribute paid thee once, in pensive strains, 
One mighty in the realm of lyric song, — 
A ceaseless wanderer through the wide domains 
Of thought, which to the studious soul belong ; — 
One far withdrawn from this world's busy throng, 
And seeking still, in academic bowers, 
A safe retreat from tumult, strife, and wrong ; 
Where, solacing with verse his lonely hours, 
He wove these fragrant wreaths of amaranthine flowers. 



XI. 

To him, from boyhood to life's latest hour, 
The passion, kindled first beside the shore 
Of thine own Thames, retain'd its early power : 
'Twas his with restless footsteps to explore 
All depths of ancient and of modern lore ; 
With unabated love to feed the eye 
Of silent thought on the exhaustless store 
Of beauty, which the gifted may descry 
In all the teeming land of fruitful phantasy. 



STANZAS. 115 



XII. 

To him the Grecian muse, devoutly woo'd, 
Unveil'd her beauty, and entranced his ear, 
In many a rapt imaginative mood, 
With harmony which only Poets hear 
Even in that old enchanted atmosphere : 
To him the painter's and the sculptor's art 
Disclosed those hidden glories, which appear 
To the clear vision of the initiate heart 
In contemplation calm, from worldly care apart. 



XIII. 

Nor lack'd he the profounder, purer sense 
Of beauty, in the face of Nature seen ; 
But loved the mountain's rude magnificence, 
The valley's glittering brooks, and pastures green, 
Moonlight, and morn, and sunset's golden sheen, 
The stillness and the storm of lake and sea, 
The hedgerow elms, with grass-grown lanes between, 
The winding footpath, the broad, bowery tree, 
The deep, clear river's course, majestically free. 



116 STANZAS. 



XIV. 

Such were his haunts in recreative hours, 
To such he fondly turn'd, from time to time, 
From Granta's cloister'd courts and gloomy towers, 
And stagnant Camus' circumambient slime ; 
Well pleased o'er Cambria's mountain-peaks to climb, 
Or, with a larger, more adventurous range, 
Plant his bold steps on Alpine heights sublime, 
And gaze on Nature's wonders vast and strange ; 
Then roam through the rich South with swift and 
ceaseless change. 

xv. 

Yet with his settled and habitual mood 
Accorded better the green English vale, 
The pastoral mead, the cool sequester'd wood, 
The spacious park fenced in with rustic pale, 
The pleasant interchange of hill and dale, 
The churchyard darken'd by the yew-tree's shade, 
And rich with many a rudely-sculptured tale 
Of friends beneath its turf sepulchral laid, 
Of human tears that flow, of earthly hopes that fade. 



STANZAS. 117 



XVI. 

Such were the daily scenes with which he fed 
The pensive spirit first awoke by Thee ; 
And blest and blameless was the life he led, 
Soothed by the gentle spells of poesy. 
Nor yet averse to stricter thought was he, 
Nor uninstructed in abstruser lore ; 
But now, with draughts of pure philosophy 
Quench'cl his soul's thirst, — now ventured to explore 
The fields by science own'd, and taste the fruits they 
bore. 

XVII. 

With many a graceful fold of learned thought 
He wrapp'd himself around, well pleased to shroud 
His spirit, in the web itself had wrought, 
From the rude pressure of the boisterous crowd ; 
Nor loftier purpose cherish'd or avow'd, 
Nor claim'd the prophet's or the teacher's praise ; 
Content in studious ease to be allow'd 
With nice artistic craft to weave his lays, 
And lose himself at will in song's melodious maze. 



118 STANZAS. 



XVIII. 

Slow to create, fastidious to refine, 
He wrought and wrought with labour long and sore, 
Adjusting word by word, and line by line, 
Each thought, each phrase remoulding o'er and o'er, 
Till art could polish and adorn no more, 
And stifled fancy sank beneath the load 
Of gorgeous words and decorative lore, 
In rich profusion on each verse bestow' d, 
To grace the shrine wherein the poet's soul abode. 



XIX. 

And was his mission thus fulfill' d on earth ? 
For no sublimer use the powers design'd 
Which liberal Nature gave him at his birth, 
And life-long culture ripen' d and refined ? 
Owed he no more to Heaven or to mankind 
Than these few notes of desultory song ? — 
Nay, slight we not Heaven's boon, nor strive to find 
Occasion to impeach the bard of wrong, 
Whose strains, a deathless gift, to us and ours belong ! 



STANZAS. 119 



XX. 

If rather for himself, a pilgrim lone 
Through this cold world, he sang to cheer his way 
And soothe his soul with music all its own, 
Than in didactic numbers to convey 
Wisdom and truth to minds from both astray, — 
If little reck'd he of his task divine, 
Man's subject spirit to instruct and sway, — 
'Twas that as yet from Poesy's bright shrine 
The light which warms our day had scarce begun to 
shine. 

XXI. 

Thought hath its changeful periods, like the deep, 
Of calm and tempest, tumult and repose ; 
And 'twas on times of intellectual sleep 
That the faint day-spring of his genius rose : 
Man's mind lay sunk awhile in slumberous dose, 
Its surface yet unruffled by the breeze 
Which should ere long its hidden depths disclose, 
And wake to feverish life of fell disease 
New swarms of embryo creeds and crude philosophies. 



120 STANZAS. 



XXII. 

Years came and went ; — beside the Poet's tomb 
The flowers of many a spring had bloom' d and died, 
When times of fierce convulsion, rage, and gloom 
Arose, and shook the nations far and wide. 
then, my Mother, by the verdant side 
Of thy bright river, lost in dreamy mood, 
Was seen a stripling pale and lustrous-eyed, 
Who far apart his lonely path pursued, 
And seem'd in sullen guise o'er troublous thoughts to 
brood. 

XXIII. 

Small sympathy he own'd or felt, I ween, 
With sports and pastimes of his young compeers, 
Nor mingling in their studies oft was seen, 
Nor shared their joys or sorrows, hopes or fears : 
Pensive he was, and grave beyond his years, 
And happiest seem'd when in some shady nook 
(His wild sad eyes suffused with silent tears) 
O'er some mysterious and forbidden book 
He pored, until his frame with strong emotion shook. 




^WWWVM IP® MSEC,, ST? ©ill IS, 



STANZAS. 121 



XXIV. 

Strange were his studies, and his sports no less. 
Full oft, beneath the blazing summer noon, 
The sun's convergent rays, with dire address, 
He turn'd on some old tree, and burnt it soon 
To ashes ; oft at eve the fire-balloon, 
Inflated by his skill, would mount on high ; 
And when tempestuous clouds had veil'd the moon, 
And lightning rent, and thunder shook the sky, 
He left his bed, to gaze on Nature's revelry. 



xxv. 

A great, a gifted, but a turbid soul 
Struggled and chafed within that stripling's breast, — 
Passion which none might conquer or control, ls^ 

And feeling too intense to be repress'd : 
His spirit was on fire, and could not rest 
Through that fierce thirst for perfect truth and love 
By which, as by a spell, it seem'd possest ; 
And long, and oft, and vainly still he strove 
To realize on earth what only dwells above. 



122 STANZAS. 



XXVI. 

To him ideal beauty had unveil'd 
In blissful vision her immortal face : 
Alas ! what marvel if on earth he fail'd 
The footsteps of that glorious form to trace ? 
What marvel that to him all things seem'd base, 
Disorder' d, and corrupt ? and when he sought 
Hope for himself, and healing for his race, 
Even in the creeds by Christian doctors taught, 
How cold to him appear' d the comfort which they 
brought ! 

XXVII. 

The thing which is, and that which ought to be ! — 
The Gospel and the Church ! — the precept given, 
And act perform'd ! — alas ! he seem'd to see 
Things unlike each to each, as earth to heaven ! — 
And thus from depth to depth of error driven, 
Through truth blasphemed, a devious course he ran, 
His brain o'erwrought, his proud heart rent and riven 
By bootless strife, — a rash misguided man, 
Farther from peace at last, than when his quest began. 



STANZAS. 123 



XXVIII. 

Yet in a world of beauty dwelt he still, 
Entranced in visions wonderful and bright, 
Which by strong magic he evoked at will 
From his soul's teeming depths; — no mortal wight 
E'er ruled with more supreme resistless might 
The wizard realm of fancy ; mortal words 
Did ne'er such music with such thought unite, 
As flow'd beneath his touch from mystic chords, 
Whose harmony none wake but song's most gifted lords. 



XXIX. 

Thus with a prophet's heart, a prophet's tone, 
Uttering his fitful oracles he stood 
Midst scorn and hatred, dauntless, though alone ; 
A marvel to the wicked, by the good 
Pitied and shunn'd, and where least understood 
Most strongly censured. — Peace be with his dust ! 
Nor be his faults relentlessly pursued 
By reprobation of the wise and just, 
Who feel themselves but men, and their own hearts 
distrust. 



124 STANZAS. 



XXX. 

But Thou, nurse and guide of youthful thought, 
Wast Thou all guiltless of thj son's decline 
From wisdom's ways ? — was no dark mischief wrought 
In that wild heart through any fault of thine ? 
Didst thou so well perform thy task divine 
To him and his compeers, — so well instil 
By precept upon precept, line on line, 
Eternal truth, that Nature's inborn ill 
Might not uncheck'd, unchanged, its wayward course 
fulfil ? 

XXXI. 

Nay, Mother, veil thy face, and meekly own 
Thy much unfaithfulness in years gone by ; — 
Thy altar cold — Heaven's light but faintly shown — 
Truth, in thy charge, itself become a lie, 
Which, even to boyhood's unsuspicious eye, 
At once lay bare and flagrant. — Well indeed 
Might faith and hope beneath thy nurture die, 
So rudely oft it crush'd the expanding seed, 
And quench'd the smoking flax, and broke the bruised 
reed. 



STANZAS. 125 



XXXII. 

Those days we trust are ended ; and do Thou 
Take heed lest they return, and thy last state 
Be worse than was thy first. With reverence bow 
Before God's throne, and on His bidding wait : 
So be thy sons for ever good and great, 
The glory and the strength of this our isle ; 
And Thou still fresh at Time's remotest date, 
While Thames shall flow, and thy green meadows 
smile, 
And youthful sports, as now, the youthful heart beguile. 



11* 



«t 



POEMS. 



ODE ON THE SPRING. 



Lo ! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours, 

Fair Venus' train, appear, 
Disclose the long-expecting flowers, 

And wake the purple year ! 
The Attic warbler pours her throat, 
Responsive to the cuckoo's note, 

The untaught harmony of spring : 
While, whispering pleasure as they fly, 
Cool Zephyrs through the clear blue sky 

Their gather' d fragrance fling. 

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch 

A broader browner shade, 
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech 

O'er-canopies the glade, 



130 ODE ON THE SPRING. 



Beside some water's rushy brink 
With me the Muse shall sit, and think 

(At ease reclined in rustic state) 
How vain the ardour of the crowd, 
How low, how little are the proud, 

How indigent the great ! 

Still is the toiling hand of Care ; 

The panting herds repose : 
Yet hark, how through the peopled air 

The busy murmur glows ! 
The insect-youth are on the wing, 
Eager to taste the honied spring, 

And float amid the liquid noon : 
Some lightly o'er the current skim, 
Some show their gayly-gilded trim 

Quick-glancing to the sun. 

To Contemplation's sober eye 

Such is the race of Man : 
And they that creep, and they that fly, 

Shall end where they began. 
Alike the Busy and the Gay 
But flutter through life's little clay, 



ODE ON THE SPRING. 131 

In Fortune's varying colours drest : 
Brush' d by the hand of rough Mischance, 
Or chill 'd by Age, their airy dance 

They leave, in dust to rest. 

Methinks I hear, in accents low, 

The sportive kind reply : 
Poor moralist ! and what art thou ? 

A solitary fly ! 
Thy joys no glittering female meets, 
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, 

No painted plumage to display : 
On hasty wings thy youth is flown ; 
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone — 

We frolic while 'tis May. 



SONNET 

ON THE DEATH OF MR. RICHARD WEST. 

In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, 

And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire : 
The birds in vain their amorous descant join ; 

Or cheerful fields resume their green attire : 
These ears, alas ! for other notes repine ; 

A different object do these eyes require : 
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine ; 

And in my breast the imperfect joys expire. 
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer, 

And new-born pleasure brings to happier men 
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear : 

To warm their little loves the birds complain : 
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear, 

And weep the more, because I weep in vain. 

132 



ODE 

ON A DISTANT PROSPECT OF ETON COLLEGE. 



AvQpomos , iKavri npoipaais a'j to dvarvxti". 

Menander. Incert Fragm. ver. 382, ed. Cler. p. 2i5. 



Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 

That crown the watery glade, 
Where grateful Science still adores 

Her Henry's holy shade ; 
And ye, that from the stately brow 
Of Windsor's heights the expanse below 

Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, 
Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers amom; 
Wanders the hoary Thames along 

His silver- winding way : 

Ah, happy hills ! ah, pleasing shade ! 
Ah, fields beloved in vain ! 



334 ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT 

Where once my careless childhood stray'd, 

A stranger yet to pain ! 
I feel the gales that from ye blow 
A momentary bliss bestow, 

As, waving fresh their gladsome wing, 
My weary soul they seem to soothe, 
And, redolent of joy and youth, 

To breathe a second spring. 

Say, father Thames, for thou hast seen 

Full many a sprightly race, 
Disporting on thy margent green, 

The paths of pleasure trace; 
Who foremost now delight to cleave, 
With pliant arm, thy glassy wave ? 

The captive linnet which enthral ? 
What idle progeny succeed 
To chase the rolling circle's speed, 

Or urge the flying ball ? 

While some on earnest business bent 
Their murmuring labours ply 

'Gainst graver hours that bring constraint 
To sweeten liberty : 



OF ETON COLLEGE. 135 

Some bold adventurers disdain 
The limits of their little reign, 

And unknown regions dare descry : 
Still as they run they look behind, 
They hear a voice in every wind, 

And snatch a fearful joy. 

Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed, 

Less pleasing when possest ; 
The tear forgot as soon as shed, 

The sunshine of the breast : 
Theirs buxom health, of rosy hue, 
Wild wit, invention ever new, 

And lively cheer, of vigour born ; 
The thoughtless day, the easy night, 
The spirits pure, the slumbers light, 

That fly the approach of morn. 

Alas ! regardless of their doom 

The little victims play ; 
No sense have they of ills to come, 

Nor care beyond to-day : 
Yet see, how all around them wait 
The ministers of human fate, 



136 ODE ON A DISTANT PROSPECT 

And black Misfortune's baleful train ! 
Ah, show them where in ambush stand, 
To seize their prey, the murtherous band ! 

Ah, tell them, they are men ! 

These shall the fury Passions tear, 

The vultures of the mind, 
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear, 

And Shame that skulks behind ; 
Or pining Love shall waste their youth, 
Or Jealousy, with rankling tooth, 

That inly gnaws the secret heart ; 
And Envy wan, and faded Care, 
Grim-visaged comfortless Despair, 

And Sorrow's piercing dart. 

Ambition this shall tempt to rise, 
Then whirl the wretch from high, 

To bitter Scorn a sacrifice, 
And grinning Infamy. 

The stings of Falsehood those shall try, 

And hard Unkindness' alter'd eye, 
That mocks the tear it forced to flow ; 

And keen Remorse with blood defiled, 



OF ETON COLLEGE. 137 

And moody Madness laughing wild 
Amid severest woe. 

Lo ! in the vale of years beneath 

A griesly troop are seen, 
The painful family of Death, 

More hideous than their queen : 
This racks the joints, this fires the veins, 
That every labouring sinew strains, 

Those in the deeper vitals rage : 
Lo ! Poverty, to fill the band, 
That numbs the soul with icy hand, 

And slow-consuming Age. 

To each his sufferings : all are men, 

Condemn'd alike to groan ; 
The tender for another's pain, 

The unfeeling for his own. 
Yet, ah ! why should they know their fate, 
Since sorrow never comes too late, 

And happiness too swiftly flies ? 
Thought would destroy their paradise. 
No more ; — where ignorance is bliss, 

'Tis folly to be wise. 

12* 



HYMN TO ADVERSITY. 



-Zrjva — 



Toy <ppov£iv Uponvg 6<5w- 
tjavra, no nadei paQtov 
Bevto. Kvpidig i'jccii/. 

iEsCH. Agam. rer. 181. 



Daughter of Jove, relentless power, 

Thou tamer of the human breast, 
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour 

The had affright, afflict the best ! 
Bound in thy adamantine chain, 
The proud are taught to taste of pain, 
And purple tyrants vainly groan 
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone. 

When first thy sire to send on earth 
Virtue, his darling child, design' d, 

138 



HYMN TO ADVERSITY. 139 

To thee lie gave the heavenly birth, 

And bade to form her infant mind. 
Stern rugged nurse ! thy rigid lore 
With patience many a year she bore : 
What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know, 
And from her own she learn'd to melt at others' woe. 

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly 

Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood, 
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy, 

And leave us leisure to be good. 
Light they disperse, and with them go 
The summer friend, the flattering foe ; 
By vain Prosperity received, 
To her they vow their truth, and are again believed. 



Wisdom in sable garb array'd, 

Immersed in rapturous thought profound, 
And Melancholy, silent maid, 

With leaden eye that loves the ground, 
Still on thy solemn steps attend : 
Warm Charity, the general friend, 
With Justice, to herself severe, 
And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear. 



140 HYMN TO ADVERSITY. 

Oh ! gently on thy suppliant's head, 

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand! 
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, 

Not circled with the vengeful band 
(As by the impious thou art seen), 
With thundering voice, and threatening mien, 
With screaming Horror's funeral cry, 
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty : 

Thy form benign, oh goddess, wear, 

Thy milder influence impart, 
Thy philosophic train be there 

To soften, not to wound, my heart. 
The generous spark extinct revive, 
Teach me to love, and to forgive, 
Exact my own defects to scan, 
What others are to feel, and know myself a Man. 



ODE 

ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT, 

DROWNED IN A TUB OP GOLD FISHES. 

'Twas on a lofty vase's side, 
Where China's gayest art had dyed 

The azure flowers that blow ; 
Demurest of the tabby kind, 
The pensive Selima, reclined, 

Gazed on the lake below. 

Her conscious tail her joy declared ; 
The fair round face, the snowy beard, 

The velvet of her paws, 
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, 
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, 

She saw ; and purr'd applause. 

141 



142 ODE ON THE DEATH 

Still had she gazed ; but midst the tide 
Two angel forms were seen to glide, 

The Genii of the stream: 
Their scaly armour's Tyrian hue 
Through richest purple to the view 

Betray'd a golden gleam. 

The hapless nymph with wonder saw : 
A whisker first, and then a claw, 

With many an ardent w T ish, 
She stretch'd, in vain, to reach the prize. 
What female heart can gold despise ? 

What Cat's averse to fish ? 

Presumptuous maid ! with looks intent 
Again she stretch'd, again she bent, 

Nor knew the gulf between. 
(Malignant Fate sat by, and smiled,) 
The slippery verge her feet beguiled, 

She tumbled headlong in. 

Eight times emerging from the flood, 
She mew'd to every watery God, 
Some speedy aid to send. 



OF A FAVOURITE CAT. 113 



No Dolphin came, no Nereid stirr'd : 
Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard. 
A favourite has no friend ! 

From hence, ye beauties, undeceived, 
Know, one false step is ne'er retrieved, 

And be with caution bold. 
Not all that tempts your wandering eyes 
And heedless hearts is lawful prize, 

Nor all, that glisters, gold. 



ELEGY 

WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD. 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me 

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, 
And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds : 

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower, 
The moping owl does to the moon complain 

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, 
Molest her ancient solitary reign. 

144 



ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD. 145 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; 

No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke : 

How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! 

Let not ambition mock their useful toil, 
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; 

Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 

13 



146 ELEGY WRITTEN IN A 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 

Await alike the inevitable hour. 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. r 

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, 
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, 

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault 
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 

Can storied urn, or animated bust, 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 

Can honour's voice provoke the silent dust, 
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death ? 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre : 

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page 
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll ; 

Chill penury repressed their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul. 



COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD. 147 



Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear : 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast, 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood, 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. 

The applause of listening senates to command, 
The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 

And read their history in a nation's eyes, 

Their lot forbad : nor circumscribed alone 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined ; 

Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne, 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 

Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride 
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 



148 ELEGY WRITTEN IN A 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, 
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray ; 

Along the cool sequester'd vale of life 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect 
Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, 
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 

Their name, their years, spelt by the unletter'd Muse, 

The place of fame and elegy supply : 
And many a holy text around she strews, 

That teach the rustic moralist to die. 

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, 
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, 

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind ? 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies, 
Some pious drops the closing eye requires ; 

E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, 
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. 



COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD. 149 

For thee, who, mindful of the unhonour'd dead, 
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; 

If chance, by lonely contemplation led, 

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, — 

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 
" Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn : 

" There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, 
That wreaths its old fantastic roots so high, 
His listless length at noontide would he stretch, 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 

" Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, 
Muttering his wayward fancies would he rove ; 
Now drooping, woful-wan, like one forlorn, 

Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love. 

" One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill, 
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree ; 
Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he : 

13* 



150 ELEGY WRITTEN IN A 

" The next, with dirges due in sad array 

Slow through the church way path we saw him borne : 

Approach and read (for thou can'st read) the lay 
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." 

THE EPITAPH. 

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth 
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown : 

Fair science frown'd not on his humble birth, 
And melancholy mark'd him for her own. 

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, 
Heaven did a recompense as largely send : 

He gave tp misery (all he had) a tear, 

He gain'd from heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. 

No farther seek his merits to disclose, 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode. 

(There they alike in trembling hope repose,) 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 



COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD. 151 



OMITTED STANZAS. 

In Gray's first MS. of the "Elegy," after the eighteenth 
stanza, ending with the word "flame," were the four fol- 
lowing stanzas : 

The thoughtless world to majesty may bow, 
Exalt the brave, and idolize success ; 

But more to innocence their safety owe, 

Than power or genius e'er conspired to bless. 

And thou who, mindful of the unhonour'd dead, 
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate, 

By night and lonely contemplation led 
To wander in the gloomy walks of fate : 

Hark ! how the sacred calm, that breathes around, 
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease ; 

In still small accents whispering from the ground, 
A grateful earnest of eternal peace. 



152 OMITTED STANZAS. 

2so more, with reason and thyself at strife, 
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room ; 

But through the cool sequester'd vale of life 
Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom. 

Here the poem was originally intended to conclude. 

After the twenty-fifth stanza, ending with the word "lawn," 
was the following stanza : 

Him have we seen the greenwood side along, 
While o'er the heath we hied, our labour done, 

Oft as the woodlark piped her farewell song, 
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun. 

And in some of the first editions, immediately before " The 
Epitaph," was the following stanza : 

There scatter' d oft, the earliest of the year, 
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found ; 

The redbreast loves to build and warble there, 
And little footsteps lightly print the ground. 



A LONG STORY. 



In Britain's isle, no matter where, 
An ancient pile of building stands : 

The Huntingdons and Hattons there 
Employ'd the power of fairy hands 

To raise the ceiling's fretted height, 
Each panel in achievements clothing, 

Rich windows that exclude the light, 
And passages that lead to nothing. 

Full oft within the spacious walls, 
When he had fifty winters o'er him, 

My grave Lord-Keeper led the brawls ; 
The seals and maces danced before him. 

153 



154 A LONG STORY. 

His bushy beard, and shoe-strings green, 
His high-crown' d hat, and satin doublet, 

Moved the stout heart of England's queen, 

Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it. 

What, in the very first beginning ! 

Shame of the versifying tribe ! 
Your history whither are you spinning ? 

Can you do nothing but describe ? 

A house there is (and that's enough) 
From whence one fatal morning issues 

A brace of warriors, not in buff, 

But rustling in their silks and tissues. 

The first came cap-a-pee from France, 

Her conquering destiny fulfilling, 
Whom meaner beauties eye askance, 

And vainly ape her art of killing. 

The other amazon kind heaven 

Had arm'd with spirit, wit, and satire ; 

But Cobham had the polish given, 

And tipp'd her arrows with good-nature. 



A LONG STORY. 155 



To celebrate her eyes, her air — 

Coarse panegyrics would but tease her ; 

Melissa is her "nom de guerre." 

Alas, who would not wish to please her ! 

With bonnet blue and capuchine, 

And aprons long, they hid their armour ; 

And veil'd their weapons, bright and keen, 
In pity to the country farmer. 

Fame, in the shape of Mr. P — t, 

(By this time all the parish know it,) 

Had told that thereabouts there lurk'd 
A wicked imp they call a poet : 

Who prowl'd the country far and near, 
Bewitch' d the children of the peasants, 

Dried up the cows, and lamed the deer, 

And suck'd the eggs, and kill'd the pheasants. 

My lady heard their joint petition, 
Swore by her coronet and ermine, 

She'd issue out her high commission 
To rid the manor of such vermin. 



356 A LONG STORY. 

The heroines undertook the task, 

Through lanes unknown, o'er stiles they ventured, 
Rapp'd at the door, nor stay'd to ask, 

But bounce into the parlour enter'd. 

The trembling family they daunt, 

They flirt, they sing, they laugh, they tattle, 
Rummage his mother, pinch his aunt, 

And up stairs in a whirlwind rattle : 

Each hole and cupboard they explore, 
Each creek and cranny of his chamber, 

Run hurry-scurry round the floor, 
And o'er the bed and tester clamber; 

Into the drawers and china pry, 

Papers and books, a huge imbroglio ! 
Under a tea-cup he might lie, 

Or creased, like dogs-ears, in a folio. 

On the first marching of the troops, 

The Muses, hopeless of his pardon, 
Convey'd him underneath their hoops 

To a small closet in the garden. 



A LONG STORY. 1G7 

So rumour says : (who will, believe.) 

But that they left the door ajar, 
Where, safe and laughing in his sleeve, 

He heard the distant din of war. 

Short was his joy. He little knew 
The power of magic was no fable ; 

Out of the window, whisk, they flew, 
But left a spell upon the table. 

The words too eager to unriddle, 

The poet felt a strange disorder ; 
Transparent bird-lime form'd the middle, 

And chains invisible the border. 

So cunning was the apparatus, 

The powerful pot-hooks did so move him, 
That, will he, nill he, to the great house 

He went, as if the devil drove him. 

Yet on his way (no sign of grace, 
. For folks in fear are apt to pray) 
To Phoebus he preferr'd his case, 

And begg'd his aid that dreadful day. 



158 A LONG STORY. 



The godhead would have back'd his quarrel ; 

But with a blush, on recollection, 
Own'd that his quiver and his laurel 

'Gainst four such eyes were no protection. 

The court was sate, the culprit there, 

Forth from their gloomy mansions creeping, 

The lady Janes and Joans repair, 
And from the gallery stand peeping : 

Such as in silence of the night 

Come (sweep) along some winding entry, 
(Tyack has often seen the sight,) 

Or at the chapel-door stand sentry. 

In peaked hoods and mantles tarnish'd, 
Sour visages, enough to scare ye, 

High dames of honour once, that garnish'd 
The drawing-room of fierce Queen Mary. 

The peeress comes. The audience stare, 
And doff their hats with due submission : 

She curtsies, as she takes her chair, 
To all the people of condition. 



A LONG STORY. 159 



The bard, with many an artful fib, 

Had in imagination fenced him, 
Disproved the arguments of Squib, 

And all that Groom could urge against him. 

But soon his rhetoric forsook him. 

When he the solemn hall had seen ; 
A sudden fit of ague shook him, 

He stood as mute as poor Macleane. 

Yet something he was heard to mutter, 
" How in the park beneath an old tree, 

(Without design to hurt the butter, 
Or any malice to the poultry,) 

" He once or twice had penn'd a sonnet ; 

Yet hoped, that he might save his bacon : 
Numbers would give their oaths upon it, 
He ne'er was for a conjurer taken." 

The ghostly prudes with hagged face 
Already had condemn'd the sinner. 

My lady rose, and with a grace — 

She smiled, and bid him come to dinner. 



160 A LONG STORY. 



" Jesu-Maria ! Madam Bridget, 

Why, what can the Viscountess mean?" 
(Cried the square-hoods in woful fidget,) 
" The times are alter'd quite and clean ! 

" Decorum's turn'd to mere civility ; 
Her air and all her manners show it. 
Commend me to her affability ! 

Speak to a commoner and a poet !" 

[Here five hundred stanzas are lost.] 

And so God save our noble king, 

And guard us from long-winded lubbers, 

That to eternity would sing, 

And keep my lady from her rubbers. 



PINDARIC ODES. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 
THE BARD. 

^covavra avveroXaW eg 

At to irau hpji.r}vib>v 

Xarilei. Pixdar. ol. ii. v. 152. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 

i. 1. 

Awake, iEolian lyre, awake, 
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings. 
From Helicon's harmonious springs 

A thousand rills their mazy progress take : 
The laughing flowers that round them blow, 
Drink life and fragrance as they flow. 
Now the rich stream of music winds along, 
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong, 

14* 161 



162 THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 



Through verdant dales, and Ceres' golden reign : 

Now rolling down the steep amain, 

Headlong, impetuous, see it pour ; 

The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar 



i. 2. 

Oh ! Sovereign of the willing soul, 
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs, 
Enchanting shell ! the sullen Cares 

And frantic Passions hear thy soft control. 
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War 
Has curb'd the fury of his car, 
And dropt his thirsty lance at thy command. 
Perching on the scepter'd hand 
Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king 
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing : 
Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie 
The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye. 



i. 3. 

Thee the voice, the dance, obey, 
Temper'd to thy warbled lay. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 1G3 

O'er Idalia's velvet-green 

The rosy-crowned Loves are seen 

On Cytherea's day ; 

With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures, 

Frisking light in frolic measures ; 

Now pursuing, now retreating, 

Now in circling troops they meet : 
To brisk notes in cadence beating, 

Glance their many-twinkling feet. 
Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare. 

Where'er she turns, the Graces homage pay. 
With arms sublime, that float upon the air, 

In gliding state she wins her easy way : 
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move 
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love. 

II. 1. 

Man's feeble race what ills await ! 
Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain, 
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train, 

And Death, sad refuge from the storms of fate ! 
The fond complaint, my song, disprove, 
And justify the laws of Jove. 



164 THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 

Say, has he given in vain the heavenly Muse ? 
Night and all her sickly dews, 
Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, 
He gives to range the dreary sky ; 
Till down the eastern cliffs afar 

Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts of 
war. 

II. 2. 

In climes beyond the solar road, 
Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, 
The Muse has broke the twilight gloom 

To cheer the shivering native's dull abode. 
And oft, beneath the odorous shade 
Of Chili's boundless forests laid, 
She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat, 
In loose numbers wildly sweet, 
Their feather-cinctured chiefs, and dusky loves. 
Her track, where'er the goddess roves, 
Glory pursue, and generous Shame, 
The unconquerable Mind, and freedom's holy flame. 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 1C5 



II. 3. 

Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep, 
Isles, that crown the iEgean deep, 

Fields, that cool Ilissus laves, 

Or where Meander's amber waves 
In lingering labyrinths creep, 

How do your tuneful echoes languish, 

Mute, but to the voice of anguish ! 
Where each old poetic mountain 

Inspiration breathed around : 
Every shade and hallow'd fountain 

Murmur' d deep a solemn sound : 
Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour, 

Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. 
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, 

And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. 
When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, 
They sought, oh Albion ! next thy sea-encircled coast. 

in. 1. 

Far from the sun and summer-gale, 
In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid, 



1G6 THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 

What time, where lucid Avon stray'd, 

To him the mighty mother did unveil 
Her awful face : the dauntless child 
Stretch'd forth his little arms and smiled. 
" This pencil take, (she said,) whose colours clear 
Richly paint the vernal year : 
Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy ! 
This can unlock the gates of joy ; 
Of horror that, and thrilling fears, 
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears." 

in. 2. 

Nor second He, that rode sublime 
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy, 
The secrets of the abyss to spy. 

He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time : 
The living throne, the sapphire blaze, 
Where angels tremble while they gaze, 
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, 
Closed his eyes in endless night. 
Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car, 
Wide o'er the fields of glory bear 



THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 167 

Two coursers of ethereal race, 

With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding 
pace. 

in. 3. 

Hark, his hands the lyre explore ! 
Bright-eyed Fancy, hovering o'er, 
Scatters from her pictured urn 
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. 
But ah ! 'tis heard no more 

Oh ! lyre divine, what daring spirit 

Wakes thee now ? Though he inherit 
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, 

That the Theban eagle bear, 
Sailing with supreme dominion 

Through the azure deep of air : 
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run 

Such forms as glitter in the Muse's ray, 
With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun : 

Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way 
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate, 
Beneath the Good how far — but far above the Great. 



1G8 THE BARD. 



THE BARD. 



i. 1. 



" Ruiisr seize thee, ruthless King ! 

Confusion on thy banners wait ; 
Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing, 

They mock the air with idle state. 
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail, 
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail 

To save thy secret soul from nightly fears, 

From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears !" 
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride 

Of the first Edward scatter'd wild dismay, 
As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side 

He wound with toilsome march his long array. 
Stout Glo'ster stood aghast in speechless trance : 
" To arms !" cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quiver- 
ing lance. 



THE BARD. 169 



I. 2. 

On a rock, whose haughty brow 
Frowns o'er cold Conway's foaming flood, 

Robed in the sable garb of woe, 
With haggard eyes the poet stood ; 
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair 
Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air,) 
And with a master's hand, and prophet's fire, 
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre. 

" Hark, how each giant-oak, and desert cave, 
Sighs to the torrent's awful voice beneath ! 
O'er thee, oh King ! their hundred arms they wave, 

Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe ; 
"Vocal no more, since Cambria's fatal day, 
To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay. 



i. 3. 

" Cold is Cadwallo's tongue, 
That hush'd the stormy main : 
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed : 
Mountains, ye mourn in vain 
Modred, whose magic song 

15 



170 THE BARD. 



Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topt head. 

On dreary Arvon's shore they lie, 
Smear' d with gore, and ghastly pale : 
Far, far aloof the affrighted ravens sail ; 

The famish' d eagle screams, and passes by. 
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, 

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, 
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, 

Ye died amidst your dying country's cries — 
No more I weep. They do not sleep. 

On yonder cliffs, a griesly band, 
I see them sit, they linger yet, 

Avengers of their native land : 
With me in dreadful harmony they join, 
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line. 



II. 1. 

" Weave the warp, and weave the woof, 
The winding-sheet of Edward's race. 

Give ample room, and verge enough 
The characters of hell to trace. 
Mark the year, and mark the night, 
When Severn shall re-echo with affright 



THE BARD. 171 



The shrieks of death, through Berkley's roof that ring, 
Shrieks of an agonizing king ! 

She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fang?, 
That tear'st the bowels of thy mangled mate, 

From thee be born, who o'er thy country hangs 
The scourge of heaven. What terrors round him wait ! 
Amazement in his van, with flight combined, 
And sorrow's faded form, and solitude behind. 



ii. 2. 

" Mighty victor, mighty lord ! 
Low on his funeral couch he lies ! 

No pitying heart, no eye, afford 
A tear to grace his obsequies. 

Is the sable warrior fled? 
Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. 
The swarm, that in thy noontide beam were born ? 
Gone to salute the rising; morn. 
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, 

While proudly riding o'er the azure realm 
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes ; 

Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm ; 



172 THE BARD. 



Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway, 
That, hush'd in grim repose, expects his evening prey. 

II. 3. 

" Fill high the sparkling bowl. 
The rich repast prepare, 

Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast : 
Close by the regal chair 

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl 

A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. 
Heard ye the din of battle bray, 

Lance to lance, and horse to horse ? 

Long years of havoc urge their destined course, 
And through the kindred squadrons mow their way. 

Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, 
With many a foul and midnight murder fed, 

Revere his consort's faith, his father's fame, 
And spare the meek usurper's holy head. 
Above, below, the rose of snow, 

Twined with her blushing foe, we spread : 
The bristled boar in infant-gore 

Wallows beneath the thorny shade. 



THE BARD. 173 



Now, brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom, 
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify bis doom. 

III. 1. 

"Edward, lo ! to sudden fate 
(Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.) 

Half of thy heart we consecrate. 
(The web is wove. The work is done.) 
Stay, oh stay ! nor thus forlorn 
Leave me unbless'd, unpitied, here to mourn : 
In yon bright track, that fires the western skies, 
They melt, they vanish from my eyes. 
But oh ! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height 

Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll '( 
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight ! 

Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul ! 
No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail. 
All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail ! 

in. 2. 

" Girt with many a baron bold 
Sublime their starry fronts they rear ; 

15* 



174 THE BARD. 



And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old 
In bearded majesty, appear. 
In the midst a form divine ! 
Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line ; 
Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face, 
Attemper'd sweet to virgin-grace. 
"What strings symphonious tremble in the air ! 

What strains of vocal transport round her play ! 
Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear ; 

They breathe a soul to animate thy clay. 
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring as she sings, 
Waves in the eye of heaven her many-colour'd wings, 

in. 3. 

" The verse adorn again 

Fierce war, and faithful love, 
And truth severe, by fairy fiction drest. 

In buskin' d measures move 
Pale grief, and pleasing pain, 
With horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. 

A voice, as of the cherub-choir, 
Gales from blooming Eden bear ; 
And distant warblings lessen on my ear, 



THE BARD. 175 



That lost in long futurity expire. 
Fond impious man, think 'st thou yon sanguine cloud, 

Raised by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day ? 
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood, 

And warms the nations with redoubled ray. 
Enough for me ; with joy I see 

The different doom our fates assign. 
Be thine despair, and sceptred care, 

To triumph, and to die, are mine." 
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height 
Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night. 



EPITAPH ON MRS. JANE CLERKE. 



This lady, the wife of Dr. John Clerke, physician at Epsom, 
died April 27, 1757 ; and was buried in the church of 
Beckenham, Kent. 



Lo ! where this silent marble weeps, 
A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps : 
A heart, within whose sacred cell 
The peaceful virtues loved to dwell. 
Affection warm, and faith sincere, 
And soft humanity were there. 
In agony, in death resign' d, 
She felt the wound she left behind, 
Her infant image here below, 
Sits smiling on a father's woe : 



EPITAPH ON MRS. JANE CLERKE. 177 

Whom what awaits, while yet he strays 

Along the lonely vale of days? 

A pang, to secret sorrow dear ; 

A sigh ; an unavailing tear ; 

Till time shall every grief remove, 

With life, with memory, and with love. 



EPITAPH ON SIR WILLIAM WILLIAMS. 



Here, foremost in the dangerous paths of fame, 
Young Williams fought for England's fair renown ; 

His mind each Muse, each Grace adorn'd his frame, 
Nor envy dared to view him with a frown. 

At Aix, his voluntary sword he drew, 

There first in blood his infant honour seal'd ; 

From fortune, pleasure, science, love, he flew, 
And scorn'd repose when Britain took the field. 

With eyes of flame, and cool undaunted breast, 
Victor he stood on Bellisle's rocky steeps — 

Ah, gallant youth ! this marble tells the rest, 
Where melancholy friendship bends, and weeps. 

178 



ODE FOR MUSIC. 



I. AIR. 

" Hence, avaunt, ('tis holy ground,) 

Comus, and liis midnight-crew, 
And Ignorance with looks profound, 

And dreaming Sloth of pallid hue, 
Mad Sedition's cry profane, 
Servitude that hugs her chain, 
Nor in these consecrated bowers, 
Let painted Flattery hide her serpent-train in flowers. 

CHORUS. 

Nor Envy base, nor creeping Gain, 
Dare the Muse's walk to stain, 
While bright-eyed Science watches round : 
Hence, away, 'tis holy ground !" 

179 



180 ODE FOR MUSIC. 



II. RECITATIVE. 

From yonder realms of empyrean day 

Bursts on my ear the indignant lay : 
There sit the sainted sage, the bard divine, 

The few, whom genius gave to shine 
Through every unborn age, and undiscover'd clime. 

Rapt in celestial transport they : 

Yet thither oft a glance from high 

They send of tender sympathy 
To bless the place, where on their opening soul 

First the genuine ardour stole. 
'Twas Milton struck the deep-toned shell, 
And, as the choral warblings round him swell, 
Meek Newton's self bends from his state sublime, 
And nods his hoary head, and listens to the rhyme. 



III. AIR. 

" Ye brown o'er-arching groves, 
That contemplation loves, 
Where willowy Camus lingers with delight ! 
Oft at the blush of dawn 
I trod your level lawn, 



ODE FOR MUSIC. 181 

Oft woo'd the gleam of Cynthia silver-bright 
In cloisters dim, far from the haunts of Folly, 
With Freedom by my side, and soft-eyed Melan- 
choly." 

IV. RECITATIVE. 

But hark ! the portals sound, and pacing forth 

With solemn steps and slow, 
High potentates, and dames of royal birth, 
And mitred fathers in long order go : 
Great Edward, with the lilies on his brow 

From haughty Gallia torn, 
And sad Chatillon, on her bridal morn 
That wept her bleeding Love, and princely Clare, 
And Anjou's heroine, and the paler rose, 
The rival of her crown and of her woes, 

And either Henry there, 
The murder'd saint, and the majestic lord 
That broke the bonds of Rome. 
(Their tears, their little triumphs o'er, 
Their human passions now no more, 
Save Charity, that glows beyond the tomb.) 



182 ODE FOR MUSIC. 

ACCOMPANIED. 

All that on Granta's fruitful plain 
Rich streams of regal bounty pour'd, 
And bade these awful fanes and turrets rise, 
To hail their Fitzroy's festal morning come ; 
And thus they speak in soft accord 
The liquid language of the skies : 

V. QUARTETTO. 

"What is grandeur, what is power? 
Heavier toil, superior pain. 
What the bright reward we gain ? 
The grateful memory of the good. 
Sweet is the breath of vernal shower, 
The bee's collected treasures sweet, 
Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet 
The still small voice of gratitude." 

VI. RECITATIVE. 

Foremost and leaning from her golden cloud 
The venerable Margaret see ! 



ODE FOR MUSIC. 183 

" Welcome, my noble son, (she cries aloud,) 
To this, thy kindred train, and me : 
Pleased in thy lineaments we trace 
A Tudor's fire, a Beaufort's grace. 

AIR. 

Thy liberal heart, thy judging eye, 
The flower unheeded shall descry, 
And bid it round heaven's altars shed 
The fragrance of its blushing head : 
Shall raise from earth the latent gem 
To glitter on the diadem. 

VII. RECITATIVE. 

" Lo ! Granta waits to lead her blooming band, 

Not obvious, not obtrusive, she 
No vulgar praise, no venal incense flings ; 

Nor dares with courtly tongue refined 
Profane thy inborn royalty of mind : 

She reveres herself and thee. 
With modest pride to grace thy youthful brow, 
The laureate wreath, that Cecil wore, she brings, 



184 ODE FOR MUSIC. 

And to thy just, thy gentle hand, 

Submits the fasces of her sway, 
While spirits blest above and men below 
Join with glad voice the loud symphonious lay. 

VIII. GRAND CHORUS. 

" Through the wild waves as they roar, 
With watchful eye and dauntless mien, 
Thy steady course of honour keep, 
Nor fear the rocks, nor seek the shore : 
The star of Brunswick smiles serene, 
And gilds the horrors of the deep." 



POEMATA. 



HYMENEAL 

ON THE MARRIAGE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS 
THE PRINCE OF WALES. 

Ignar^i nostrum mentes, et inertia corda, 
Dum curas regum, et sortem miseramur iniquani, 
Quae solio affixit, vetuitque calescere flamma 
Dulci, quae dono divum, gratissima serpit 
Viscera per, mollesque animis lene implicat aestus ; 
Nee teneros sensus, Veneris nee praemia norunt, 
Eloquiumve oculi, aut facunda silentia linguae : 

Scilicet ignorant lacrymas, saevosque dolores, 
Dura rudimenta, et violentae exordia flammae ; 

16* 185 



186 MARRIAGE OF THE 

Scilicet ignorant, quae flumine tinxit aniaro 
Tela Venus, csecique armamentaria Divi, 
Irasque, insidiasque, et taciturn sub pectore vulnus ; 
Namque sub ingressu, primoque in limine Amoris 
Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curse ; 
Intus habent dulces Risus, et Gratia sedem, 
Et roseis resupina toris, roseo ore Voluptas : 
Regibus hue faciles aditus ; communia spernunt 
Ostia, jamque expers duris custodibus istis 
Panditur accessus, penetraliaque intima Templi. 

Tuque Oh ! Angliacis, Princeps, spes optima regnis, 
Ne tantum, ne finge metum : quid imagine captus 
Hgeres, et mentem pictura pascis inani ? 
Umbram miraris : nee longum tempus, et ipsa 
Ibit in amplexus, thalamosque ornabit ovantes. 
Ille tamen tabulis inhians longum haurit amorem, 
Affatu fruitur tacito, auscultatque tacentem 
Immemor artificis calami, risumque, ruboremque 
Aspicit in fucis, pictseque in virginis ore : 
Tanta Venus potuit ; tantus tenet error amantes. 

Nascere, magna Dies, qua sese Augusta Britanno 
Committat Pelago, patriamque relinquat amoenam ; 



PRINCE OF WALES. 187 

Cujus in adventum jam nunc tria regna secundos 
Attolli in plausus, dulcique accensa furore 
Incipiunt agitare modos, et carmina dicunt : 
Ipse animo sedenim juvenis comitatur euntem 
Explorat ventos, atque auribus aera captat, 
Atque auras, atque astra vocat crudelia; pectus 
Intentum exultat, surgitque arrecta cupido ; 
Incusat spes segra fretum, solitoque videtur 
Latior effundi pontus, fluctusque morantes. 

Nascere, Lux major, qua sese Augusta Britanno 
Committat juveni totam, propriamque dicabit ; 
At citius (precor) Oh ! cedas melioribus astris ; 
Nox finem pompge, finemque imponere curis 
Possit, et in thalamos furtim deducere nuptam ; 
Sufficiat requiemque viris, et amantibus umbras : 
Adsit Hymen, et subridens cum matre Cupido 
Accedant, sternantque toros, ignemque ministrent ; 
Ilicet haud pictse incandescit imagine formse 
Ulterius juvenis, verumque agnoscit amorem. 

Sculptile sicut ebur, faciemque arsisse venustam 
Pygmaliona canunt: ante hanc suspiria ducit, 
Alloquiturque amens, flammamque et vulnera narrat ; 



188 MARRIAGE OF PRINCE OF WALES. 

Implorata Venus jussit cum vivere signum, 
Fcemineam inspirans animam ; quae gaudia surgunt, 
Audiit ut primse nascentia murmura linguae, 
Luctari in vitam, et paulatim volvere ocellos 
Sedulus, aspexitque nova splendescere flamma, ; 
Corripit amplexu vivam, jamque oscula jungit 
Acria confestim, recipitque rapitque ; prioris 
Immemor ardoris, Nympliaeque oblitus eburnese. 

Tho. Gray. Pet. Coll. 



LUNA IIABITABILIS. 189 



LUNA HABITABILIS. 

Dum Nox rorantes, non incomitata per auras 
Urget equos, tacitoque inducit sidera lapsu ; 
Ultima, sed nulli soror inficianda sororum 
Hue mihi, Musa ; tibi patet alti janua coeli, 
Astra vides, nee te numeri, nee nomina fallunt. 
Hue mihi, Diva veni ; dulce est per aperta serena 
Vere frui liquido, compoque errare silenti ; 
Vere frui dulce est ; modo tu dignata petentem 
Sis comes, et mecum gelidti spatiere sub umbra. 
Scilicet hos orbes, coeli hsec decora alta putandum est, 
Noctis opes, nobis tantum lucere ; virumque 
Ostentari oculis, nostrse laquearia terrse, 
Ingentes scenas, vastique aulsea theatri ? 
Oh ! quis me pennis sethrse super ardua sistet 
Mirantem, propiusque dabit convexa tueri ; 
Teque adeo, unde fluens reficit lux mollior arva 
Pallidiorque dies, tristes solata tenebras ? 



190 LUNA HABITABILIS. 

Sic ego, subridens Dea sic ingressa vicissim : 
Non pennis opus hie, supera ut simul ilia petarnus : 
Disce, Puer, potius coelo deducere Limani ; 
Neu crede ad magicas te invitum accingier artes, 
Thessalicosve modos ; ipsam descendere Phoeben 
Conspicies novus Endymion ; seque offeret ultro 
Vista tibi ante oculos, et nota major imago. 

Quin tete admoveas (tumuli super aggere spectas), 
Compositum tubulo ; simul imum invade canalem 
Sic intenta acie, coeli simul alta patescent 
Atria ; jam que, ausus Lunaria visere regna, 
Ingrediere solo, et caput inter nubila condes. 

Ecce autem ! vitri se in vertice sistere Phoeben 
Cernis, et Oceanum, et crebris Freta consita terris 
Panclitur ille atram faciem caligine condens 
Sublustri ; refugitque oculos, fallitque tuentem ; 
Integram Solis lucem quipp& haurit aperto 
Fluctu avidus radiorum, et longos imbibit ignes : 
Verum Ms, quse, maculis variata nitentibus, auro 
Coerula cliscernunt, celso sese insula dorso 
Plurima protrudit, prsetentaque littora saxis ; 
Liberior datur his quoniam natura, minusque 



LUNA HABITABILIS. 191 

Lumen clepascunt liquidum ; sed tela diei 
Detorquent, retroque docent se vertere flammas. 

Hinc longos videas tractus, terrasque jacentes 
Ordine candenti, et claros se attollere montes ; 
Montes queis Rhodope assurgat, quibus Ossa nivali 
Vertice : turn scopulis infra pendentibus antra 
Nigrescunt clivorum umbra, nemorumque tenebris. 
Non rores illi, aut desunt sua nubila mundo ; 
Non frigus gelidum, atque herbis gratissimus imber ; 
His quoque nota ardet picto Thaumantias arcu, 
Os roseum Aurorse, propriique crepuscula coeli. 

Et dubitas tantum certis cultoribus orbem 
Destitui ? exercent agros, sua moenia condunt 
Hi quoque, vel Martem invadunt, curantque triumphos 
Victores : sunt hie etiam sua prsemia laudi ; 
His metus, atque amor, et mentem mortalia tangunt. 
Quin, uti nos oculis jam nunc juvat ire per arva, 
Lucentesque plagas Lunse, pontumque profundum ; 
Idem illos etiam ardor agit, cum se aureus effert 
Sub sudum globus, et terrarum ingentior orbis ; 
Scilicet omne sequor turn lustrant, scilicet omnem 
Tellurem, gentesque polo sub utroque jacentes ; 



192 LUNA HABITABILIS. 

Et quidam sestivi indefessus ad cetheris ignes 
Pervigilat, noctem exercens, coelumque fatigat ; 
Jam Galli apparent, jam se Germania late" 
Tollit, et albescens pater Apenninus ad auras ; 
Jam tandem in Borean, en ! parvulus Anglia nsevus 
(Quanquam aliis longe fulgentior) extulit oras ; 
Formosum extemplo lumen, maculamque nitentem 
Invisunt crebri Proceres, seriimque tuendo ; 
Haerent, certatimque suo cognomine signant : 
Forsitan et Lunge longinquus in orbe Tyrannus 
Se dominum vocat, et nostrti se jactat in aul£i. 
Terras possim alias propiori sole calentes 
Narrare, atque alias, jubaris quels parcior usus, 
Lunarum chorus, et tenuis penuria Phoebi : 
Ni, meditans eadem hsec audaci evolvere cantu, 
Jam pulset citharam soror, et prseludia tentet. 

Non tamen lias proprias laudes, nee facta silebo 
Jamprid^m in fatis, patrieeque oracula famse. 
'Tempus erit, sursiim totos contendere coetus 
Quo cernes longo excursu, primosque colonos 
Migrare in lunam, et notos mutare Penates : 
Dum stupet obtutu tacito vetus incola, longeque 
Insolitas explorat aves, classemque volantem. 



LUNA HABITABILIS. 193 

Ut quondam ignotum niarmor, camposque natantes 
Tranavit Zephyros visens, nova regna, Columbus ; 
Litora mirantur circum, mirantur et undse 
Inclusas acies ferro, turmasque biformes, 
Monstraque foeta armis, et non imitabile fulmen. 
Foedera mox icta, et gemini commercia mundi, 
Agminaque assueto glomerata sub sethere cerno. 
Anglia, quae pelagi jamdudum torquet habenas, 
Exercetque frequens ventos, atque imperat undae ; 
Aeris attollet fasces, veteresque triumphos 
Hue etiam ferret, et victis dominabitur auris. 



17 



TRANSLATIONS. 



THE FATAL SISTERS. 

AN ODE. FROM THE NORSE TONGUE. 

Now the storm begins to lower, 
(Haste, the loom of hell prepare,) 

Iron sleet of arrowy shower 
Hurtles in the darken'd air. 

Glittering lances are the loom, 
Where the dusky warp we strain, 

Weaving many a soldier's doom, 
Orkney's woe, and Kandver's bane. 

See the griesly texture grow ! 

('Tis of human entrails made,) 
And the weights, that play below, 

Each a gasping warrior's head. 

191 



THE FATAL SISTERS. 191 

Shafts for shuttles, dipt in gore, 
Shoot the trembling chords along. 

Sword, that once a monarch bore, 
Keep the tissue close and strong. 

Mista, black terrific maid, 

Sangrida, and Hilda, see, 
Join the wayward work to aid : 

'Tis the woof of victory. 

Ere the ruddy sun be set, 

Pikes must shiver, javelins sing, 
Blade with clattering buckler meet, 

Hauberk crash, and helmet ring. 

(Weave the crimson web of war) 

Let us go, and let us fly, 
Where our friends the conflict share, 

Where they triumph, where they die. 

As the paths of fate we tread, 

Wading through the ensanguined field, 

Gonclula, and Geira, spread 

O'er the youthful king your shield. 



196 THE FATAL SISTERS. 

We the reins to slaughter give, 
Ours to kill, and ours to spare : 

Spite of danger he shall live. 

(Weave the crimson web of war.) 

They, whom once the desert-beach 
Pent within its bleak domain, 

Soon their ample sway shall stretch 
O'er the plenty of the plain. 

Low the dauntless earl is laid, 

Gored with many a gaping wound : 

Fate demands a nobler head ; 

Soon a king shall bite the ground. 

Long his loss shall Eirin weep, 
Ne'er again his likeness see ; 

Long her strains in sorrow steep : 
Strains of immortality ! 

Horror covers all the heath, 
Clouds of carnage blot the sun. 

Sisters, weave the web of death ; 
Sisters, cease ; the work is done. 



THE FATAL SISTERS. 197 

Hail the task, and hail the hands ! 

Songs of joy and triumph sing ! 
Joy to the victorious bands ; 

Triumph to the younger king. 

Mortal, thou that hear'st the tale, 

Learn the tenor of our song. 
Scotland, through each winding vale 

Far and wide the notes prolong. 

Sisters, hence with spurs of speed: 
Each her thundering falchion wield: 

Each bestride her sable steed. 
Hurry, hurry to the field ! 



17* 



THE VEGTAM'S KIVITHA; 
OR, THE DESCENT OF ODIN. 

AN ODE. FROM THE NORSE TONGUE. 

Uprose the king of men with speed, 
And saddled straight his coal-black steed 
Down the yawning steep he rode, 
That leads to Hela's drear abode. 
Him the dog of darkness spied ; 
His shaggy throat he open'd wide, 
(While from his jaws, with carnage fill'd, 
Foam and human gore distill'd :) 
Hoarse he bays with hideous din, 
Eyes that glow, and fangs that grin ; 
And long pursues with fruitless yell, 
The father of the powerful spell. 



THE VEGTAM'S KIVITHA. 199 

Onward still his way he takes, 

(The groaning earth beneath him shakes,) 

Till full before his fearless eyes 

The portals nine of hell arise. 

Right against the eastern gate, 
By the moss-grown pile he sate ; 
Where long of yore to sleep was laid 
The dust of the prophetic maid. 
Facing to the northern clime, 
Thrice he traced the Runic rhyme ; 
Thrice pronounced, in accents dread, 
The thrilling verse that wakes the dead : 
Till from out the hollow ground 
Slowly breathed a sullen sound. 

PROPHETESS. 

What call unknown, what charms presume 
To break the quiet of the tomb ? 
W T ho thus afflicts my troubled sprite, 
And drags me from the realms of night ? 
Long on these mouldering bones have beat 
The winter's snow, the summer's heat, 



200 THE VEGTAM'S KIVITHA. 

The drenching dews, and driving rain ! 
Let me, let me sleep again. 
Who is he, with voice unblest, 
That calls me from the bed of rest ? 

ODIN. 

A traveller, to thee unknown, 
Is he that calls, a warrior's son. 
Thou the deeds of light shalt know ; 
Tell me what is done below, 
For whom yon glittering board is spread, 
Dress'd for whom yon golden bed ? 

PROPHETESS. 

Mantling in the goblet see 
The pure beverage of the bee : 
O'er it hangs the shield of gold ; 
'Tis the drink of Balder bold : 
Balder's head to death is given. 
Pain can reach the sons of heaven ! 
Unwilling I my lips unclose : 
Leave me, leave me to repose. 



THE VEGTAM'S KIVITHA. 201 



ODIN. 

Once again my call obey, 
Prophetess, arise, and say, 
What dangers Odin's child await, 
Who the author of his fate ? 



PROPHETESS. 

In Hoder's hand the hero's doom; 
His brother sends him to the tomb. 
Now my weary lips I close : 
Leave me, leave me to repose. 

ODIN. 

Prophetess, my spell obey, 
Once again arise, and say, 
Who the avenger of his guilt, 
By whom shall Hoder's blood be spilt ? 

PEOPHETESS. 

In the caverns of the west, 
By Odin's fierce embrace comprest, 



202 THE VEGTAM'S KIVITHA. 

A wondrous boy shall Rinda bear, 
Who ne'er shall comb his raven-hair, 
Nor wash his visage in the stream, 
Nor see the sun's departing beam, 
Till he on Hoder's corse shall smile, 
Flaming on the funeral pile. 
Now my weary lips I close : 
Leave me, leave me to repose. 

ODIN. 

Yet a while my call obey : 
Prophetess, awake, and say, 
What virgins these, in speechless woe, 
That bend to earth their solemn brow, 
That their flaxen tresses tear, 
And snowy veils that float in air ? 
Tell me whence their sorrows rose : 
Then I leave thee to repose. 

PROPHETESS. 

Ha ! no traveller art thou, 
King of men, I know thee now ; 



THE VEGTAM'S KIVITHA. 203 



Mightiest of a mighty line- 



ODIN. 

No boding maid of skill divine 
Art thou, nor prophetess of good; 
But mother of the giant brood ! 

PROPHETESS. 

Hie thee hence, and boast at home, 
That never shall inquirer come 
To break my iron-sleep again ; 
Till Lok has burst his tenfold chain ; 
Never, till substantial night 
Has reassumed her ancient right; 
Till wrapt in flames, in ruin hurl'd, 
Sinks the fabric of the world. 



THE TRIUMPHS OF OWEN. 

A FRAGMENT. FROM THE WELSH. 

Owen's praise demands my song, 
Owen swift, and Owen strong ; 
Fairest flower of Roderic's stem, 
Gwyneth's shield, and Britain's gem. 
He nor heaps his brooded stores, 
Nor on all profusely pours ; 
Lord of every regal art, 
Liberal hand, and open heart. 

Big with hosts of mighty name, 
Squadrons three against him came ; 
This the force of Eirin hiding, 
Side by side as proudly riding, 
On her shadow long and gay 
Lochlin plows the watery way ; 

204 



THE TRIUMPHS OF OWEN. 205 



There the Norman sails afar 
Catch the winds and join the war: 
Black and huge along they sweep, 
Burdens of the angry deep. 

Dauntless on his native sands 
The dragon-son of Mona stands ; 
In glittering arms and glory drest, 
High he rears his ruby crest. 
There the thundering strokes begin, 
There the press, and there the din ; 
Talymalfra's rocky shore 
Echoing to the battle's roar. 
Check'd by the torrent-tide of blood, 
Backward Meinai rolls his flood; 
While, heap'd his master's feet around, 
Prostrate warriors gnaw the ground. 
Where his glowing eyeballs turn, 
Thousand banners round him burn : 
Where he points his purple spear, 
Hasty, hasty rout is there, 
Marking with indignant eye 
Fear to stop, and shame to fly. 

18 



206 THE TRIUMPHS OF OWEN. 

There confusion, terror's child, 
Conflict fierce, and ruin wild, 
Agony, that pants for breath, 
Despair and honourable death. 



THE DEATH OF HOEL. 

AN ODE. SELECTED FROM THE GODODIX. 

Had I but the torrent's might, 
With headlong rage and wild affright 
Upon De'ira's squadrons hurl'd 
To rush, and sweep them from the world ! 

Too, too secure in youthful pride, 
By them, my friend, my Hoel, died, 
Great Cian's son : of Madoc old 
He ask'd no heaps of hoarded gold ; 
Alone in nature's wealth array'd, 
He ask'd and had the lovely maid. 

To Cattraeth's vale in glittering row 
Thrice two hundred warriors go : 



208 THE DEATH OF HOEL. 



Every warrior's manly neck 
Chains of regal honour deck, 
Wreath' d in many a golden link : 
From the golden cup they drink 
Nectar that the bees produce, 
Or the grape's ecstatic juice. 
Flush' d with mirth and hope they burn 
But none from Cattraeth's vale return, 
Save Aeron brave, and Conan strong, 
(Bursting through the' bloody throng) 
And I, the meanest of them all, 
That live to weep and sing their fall. 

Have ye seen the tusky boar, 
Or the bull, with sullen roar, 
On surrounding foes advance? 
So Caradoc bore his lance. 



Conan' s name, my lay, rehearse, 
Build to him the lofty verse, 
Sacred tribute of the bard, 
Verse, the hero's sole reward. 



THE DEATH OF HOEL. 209 

As the flame's devouring force ; 
As the whirlwind in its course ; 
As the thunder's fiery stroke, 
Glancing on the shiver'd oak ; 
Did the sword of Conan mow 
The crimson harvest of the foe. 



POSTHUMOUS POEMS. 



AGRIPPINA, A TRAGEDY. 



A FRAGMENT. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 



Agrippina, the Empress-mother. 
Nero, the Emperor. 

Poppa;A, believed to be in love with Otho. 
Otho, a young man of quality, in love 

With P0PP.EA. 



Seneca, the Emperor's Preceptor. 
Anicetus, Captain of the Guards. 
Demetrius, the Cynic, friend to Seneca. 
Aceronia, Confidant to Agrippina. 



ACT I. Scene I. — Agrippina. Aceronia. 

Scene. — The Emperor's villa at Baice. 

Agrip. Tis well, begone ! your errand is per- 
form'd, [Speaks as to Anicetus entering. 

The message needs no comment. Tell your master, 
His mother shall obey him. Say you saw her 
Yielding due reverence to his high command : 
Alone, unguarded, and without a lictor, 
As fits the daughter of Germanicus. 
Say, she retired to Antium ; there to tend 
Her household cares, a woman's best employment. 
What if you add how she turn'd pale and trembled ; 
You think, you spied a tear stand in her eye, 

213 



214 AGRIPPINA. 



And would have dropp'd, but that her pride restrain'dit ? 

(Go ! you can paint it well) 'twill profit you, 

And please the stripling. Yet 'twould dash his joy 

To hear the spirit of Britannicus 

Yet walks on earth : at least there are who know 

Without a spell to raise, and bid it fire 

A thousand haughty hearts, unused to shake 

When a boy frowns, nor to be lured with smiles 

To taste of hollow kindness, or partake 

His hospitable board : they are aware 

Of the unpledged bowl, they love not aconite. 

Acer. He's gone : and much I hope these walls 
alone 
And the mute air are privy to your passion. 
Forgive your servant's fears, who sees the danger 
Which fierce resentment cannot fail to raise 
In haughty youth, and irritated power. 

Agrip. And dost thou talk to me, to me of danger, 
Of haughty youth and irritated power, 
To her that gave it being, her that arm'd 
This painted Jove, and taught his novice hand 
To aim the forked bolt ; while he stood trembling, 
Scared at the sound, and dazzled with its brightness 'i 

'Tis like, thou hast forgot, when yet a stranger 



AGRIPTINA. 



To adoration, to the grateful steam 

Of flattery's incense, and obsequious vows 

From voluntary realms, a puny boy, 

Deck'd with no other lustre than the blood 

Of Agrippina's race, he lived unknown 

To fame, or fortune ; haply eyed at distance 

Some eclileship, ambitious of the power 

To judge of weights and measures ; scarcely dared 

On expectation's strongest wing to soar 

High as the consulate, that empty shade 

Of long-forgotten liberty : when I 

Oped his young eye to bear the blaze of greatness ; 

Show'd him where empire tower'd, and bade him strike 

The noble quarry. Gods ! then was the time 

To shrink from danger ; fear might then have worn 

The mask of prudence ; but a heart like mine, 

A heart that glows with the pure Julian fire, 

If bright ambition from her craggy seat 

Display the radiant prize, will mount undaunted, 

Gain the rough heights, and grasp the dangerous 

honour. 
Acer. Through various life I have pursued your 

steps, 
Have seen your soul, and wonder'd at its daring : 



21G AGRIPPINA. 



Hence rise my fears. Nor am I yet to learn 
How vast the debt of gratitude which Nero 
To such a mother owes ; the world, you gave him, 
Suffices not to pay the obligation. 

I well remember too, (for I was present,) 
When in a secret and dead hour of night, 
Due sacrifice perform' d with barbarous rites 
Of mutter'd charms, and solemn invocation, 
You bade the Magi call the dreadful powers 
That read futurity, to know the fate 
Impending o'er your son : their answer was, 
If the son reign, the mother perishes. 
Perish (you cried) the mother ! reign the son ! 
He reigns, the rest is heaven's ; who oft has bade, 
Even when its will seem'd wrote in lines of blood, 
The unthought event disclose a whiter meaning. 
Think too how oft in weak and sickly minds 
The sweets of kindness lavishly indulged 
Rankle to gall ; and benefits too great 
To be repaid, sit heavy on the soul, 
As unrequited wrongs. The willing homage 
Of prostrate Rome, the senate's joint applause, 
The riches of the earth, the train of pleasures 
That wait on youth, and arbitrary sway : 



AGRIPPINA. 217 



These were your gift, and with them you bestow'd 
The very power he has to be ungrateful. 

Agrip. Thus ever grave and undisturb'd reflection 
Pours its cool dictates in the madding ear 
Of rage, and thinks to quench the fire it feels not. 
Say'st thou I must be cautious, must be silent, 
And tremble at the phantom I have raised ? 
Carry to him thy timid counsels. He 
Perchance may heed them : tell him too, that one 
Who had such liberal power to give, may still 
With equal power resume that gift, and raise 
A tempest that shall shake her own creation 
To its original atoms — tell me ! say, 
This mighty emperor, this dreaded hero, 
Has he beheld the glittering front of war ? 
Knows his soft ear the trumpet's thrilling voice, 
And outcry of the battle ? Have his limbs 
Sweat under iron harness ? Is he not 
The silken son of dalliance, nursed in ease 
And pleasure's flowery lap ? — Rubellius lives, 
And Sylla has his friends, though school'd by fear 
To bow the supple knee, and court the times 
With shows of fair obeisance ; and a call, 
Like mine, might serve belike to wake pretensions 

19 



218 A GRIP PIN A. 



Drowsier than theirs, who boast the genuine blood 
Of our imperial house. 

Acer. Did I not wish to check this dangerous 
passion, 
I might remind my mistress that her nod 
Can rouse eight hardy legions, wont to stem 
With stubborn nerves the tide, and face the rigour 
Of bleak Germania's snows. Four, not less brave, 
That in Armenia quell the Parthian force 
Under the warlike Corbulo, by you 
Mark'd for their leader : these, by ties confirm'd, 
Of old respect and gratitude, are. yours. 
Surely the Masians too, and those of Egypt, 
Have not forgot your sire : the eye of Rome 
And the Praetorian camp have long revered, 
With custom'd awe, the daughter, sister, wife, 
And mother of their Csesars. 

Agrip. Ha ! by Juno, 
It bears a noble semblance. On this base 
My great revenge shall rise ; or say we sound 
The trump of liberty ; there will not want, 
Even in the servile senate, ears to own 
Her spirit-stirring voice ; Soranus there, 
And Cassius ; Vetus too, and Thrasea. 



AGRIPPINA. 219 



Minds of the antique cast, rough, stubborn souls, 
That struggle with the yoke. How shall the spark 
Unquenchable, that glows within their breasts, 
Blaze into freedom, when the idle herd 
(Slaves from the womb, created but to stare, 
And bellow in the Circus) yet will start, 
And shake them at the name of liberty, 
Stung by a senseless word, a vain tradition, 
As there were magic in it ? Wrinkled beldams 
Teach it their grandchildren, as somewhat rare 
That anciently appear'd, but when, extends 
Beyond their chronicle — oh ! 'tis a cause 
To arm the hand of childhood, and rebrace 
The slacken'd sinews of time-wearied age. 

Yes, we may meet, ungrateful boy, we may ! 
Again the buried Genius of old Rome 
Shall from the dust uprear his reverend head, 
Roused by the shout of millions : there before 
His high tribunal thou and I appear. 
Let majesty sit on thy awful brow, 
And lighten from thy eye : around thee call 
The gilded swarm that wantons in the sunshine 
Of thy full favour ; Seneca be there 
In gorgeous phrase of labour' d eloquence 



220 AGRIPPINA. 



To dress thy plea, and Burrhus strengthen it 
With his plain soldier's oath and honest seeming. 
Against thee, liberty and Agrippina : 
The world, the prize ; and fair befall the victors. 

But soft ! why do I waste the fruitless hours 
In threats unexecuted ? Haste thee, fly 
These hated walls that seem to mock my shame, 
And cast me forth in duty to their lord. 

Acer. 'Tis time to go, the sun is high advanced, 
And, ere mid-day, Nero will come to Baiae. 

Agrip. My thought aches at him ; not the basilisk 
More deadly to the sight, than is to me 
The cool injurious eye of frozen kindness. 
I will not meet its poison. Let him feel 
Before he sees me. 

Acer. Why then stays my sovereign, 
Where he so soon may — 

Agrip. Yes, I will be gone, 
But not to Antium — all shall be confess'd, 
Whate'er the frivolous tongue of giddy fame 
Has spread among the crowd ; things, that but whis- 

per'd 
Have arch'd the hearer's brow, and riveted 
His eyes in fearful ecstasy: no matter 



AGRIPPINA. 221 



What ; so't be strange, and dreadful. — Sorceries, 
Assassinations, poisonings — the deeper 
My guilt, the blacker his ingratitude. 

And you, ye manes of ambition's victims, 
Enshrined Claudius, with the pitied ghosts 
Of the Syllani, doom'd to early death, 
(Ye unavailing horrors, fruitless crimes !) 
If from the realms of night my voice ye hear, 
In lieu of penitence, and vain remorse, 
Accept my vengeance. Though by me ye bled, 
He was the cause. My love, my fears for him, 
Dried the soft springs of pity in my heart, 
And froze them up with deadly cruelty. 
Yet if your injured shades demand my fate, 
If murder cries for murder, blood for blood, 
Let me not fall alone ; but crush his pride, 
And sink the traitor in his mother's ruin. 

[Exeunt. 

Scene II. Otho, PoppiEA. 

Otho. Thus far we're safe. Thanks to the rosy 
queen 
Of amorous thefts : and had her wanton son 
Lent us his wings, we could not have beguiled 

19* 



222 AGEIPPINA. 



With more elusive speed the dazzled sight 
Of wakeful jealousy. Be gay securely ; 
Dispel, my fair, with smiles, the timorous cloud 
That hangs on thy clear brow. So Helen look'd, 
So her white neck reclined, so was she borne 
By the young Trojan to his gilded bark 
With fond reluctance, yielding modesty, 
And oft reverted eye, as if she knew not 
Whether she fear'd, or wish'd to be pursued. 



[TO IGNORANCE.] 



A FRAGMENT. 



Hail, horrors, hail ! ye ever gloomy bowers, 
Ye gothic fanes, and antiquated towers, 
Where rushy Camus' slowly-winding flood 
Perpetual draws his humid train of mud : 
Glad I revisit thy neglected reign, 
Oh take me to thy peaceful shade again. 
But chiefly thee, whose influence breathed from high 
Augments the native darkness of the sky ; 
Ah, ignorance ! soft salutary power ! 
Prostrate with filial reverence I adore. 
Thrice hath Hyperion roll'd his annual race, 
Since weeping I forsook thy fond embrace. 

223 



224 TO IGNORANCE. 

Oh say, successful dost thou still oppose 
Thy leaden aegis 'gainst our ancient foes ? 
Still stretch, tenacious of thy right divine, 
The massy sceptre o'er thy slumbering line ? 
And dews Lethean through the land dispense 
To steep in slumbers each benighted sense ? 
If any spark of wit's delusive ray 
Break out, and flash a momentary day, 
With damp, cold touch forbid it to aspire, 
And huddle up in fogs the dangerous fire. 

Oh say — she hears me not, but, careless grown, 
Lethargic nods upon her ebon throne. 
Goddess ! awake, arise ! alas, my fears ! 
Can powers immortal feel the force of years ? 
Not thus of old, with ensigns wide unfurl'd, 
She rode triumphant o'er the vanquish'd world ; 
Fierce nations own'd her unresisted might, 
And all was ignorance, and all was night. 

Oh ! sacred age ! Oh ! times for ever lost ! 
(The schoolman's glory and the churchman's boast. 
For ever gone — yet still to fancy new, 



TO IGNORANCE. 



Her rapid wings the transient scene pursue, 
And bring the buried ages back to view. 

High on her car, behold the grandam ride 
Like old Sesostris with barbaric pride ; 
* * * a team of harness'd monarchs bend 



THE ALLIANCE OF 

EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT. 



A FRAGMENT. 



ESSAY I. 



H6Tuy', co 'yadc' rav yap doiSav 

Ovti ira eis AtSav yi rav £K\e\aQovra (pvXa^ets- 

Theocritus, Id. I. 63. 

As sickly plants betray a niggard earth, 
Whose barren bosom starves her generous birth, 
Nor genial warmth, nor genial juice retains, 
Their roots to feed, and fill their verdant veins : 
And as in climes, where winter holds his reign, 
The soil, though fertile, will not teem in vain, 
Forbids her gems to swell, her shades to rise, 
Nor trusts her blossoms to the churlish skies : 
So draw mankind in vain the vital airs, 
Unform'd, unfriended, by those kindly cares, 

226 



EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT. 227 



That health and vigour to the soul impart, 

Spread the young thought, and warm the opening heart : 

So fond instruction on the growing powers 

Of nature idly lavishes her stores, 

If equal justice with unclouded face 

Smile not indulgent on the rising race, 

And scatter, with a free though frugal hand, 

Light golden showers of plenty o'er the land : 

But tyranny has fix'd her empire there, 

To check their tender hopes with chilling fear, 

And blast the blooming promise of the year. 

This spacious animated scene survey, 
From where the rolling orb, that gives the day, 
His sable sons with nearer course surrounds 
To either pole, and life's remotest bounds, 
How rude soe'er the exterior form we find, 
Howe'er opinion tinge the varied mind, 
Alike to all, the kind, impartial heaven 
The sparks of truth and happiness has given : 
With sense to feel, with memory to retain, 
They follow pleasure, and they fly from pain ; 
Their judgment mends the plan their fancy draws, 
The event presages, and explores the cause ; 



228 EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT. 

The soft returns of gratitude they know, 
By fraud elude, by force repel the foe ; 
While mutual wishes, mutual woes endear 
The social smile, the sympathetic tear. 

Say, then, through ages by what fate confined 
To different climes seem different souls assign'd? 
Here measured laws and philosophic ease 
Fix, and improve the polish' d arts of peace ; 
There industry and gain their vigils keep, 
Command the winds, and tame the unwilling deep : 
Here force and hardy deeds of blood prevail ; 
There languid pleasure sighs in every gale. 
Oft o'er the trembling nations from afar 
Has Scythia breathed the living cloud of war ; 
And, where the deluge burst, with sweepy sway 
Their arms, their kings, their gods were roll'd away. 
As oft have issued, host impelling host, 
The blue-eyed myriads from the Baltic coast. 
The prostrate south to the destroyer yields 
Her boasted titles, and her golden fields : 
With grim delight the brood of winter view 
A brighter day, and heavens of azure hue; 



EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT. 229 

Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose, 

And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows. 

Proud of the yoke, and pliant to the rod. 

Why yet does Asia dread a monarch's nod, 

While European freedom still withstands 

The encroaching tide that drowns her lessening lands ; 

And sees far off, with an indignant groan, 

Her native plains, and empires once her own ? 

Can opener skies and sons of fiercer flame 

O'erpower the fire that animates our frame ; 

As lamps, that shed at eve a cheerful ray, 

Fade and expire beneath the eye of day ? 

Need we the influence of the northern star 

To string our nerves and steel our hearts to war ? 

And, where the face of nature laughs around, 

Must sickening virtue fly the tainted ground ? 

Unmanly thought ! what seasons can control, 

What fancied zone can circumscribe the soul, 

Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs, 

By reason's light, on resolution's wings, 

Spite of her frail companion, dauntless goes 

O'er Libya's deserts and through Zembla's snows ? 

She bids each slumbering energy awake, 

Another touch, another temper take, 
20 



230 EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT. 

Suspends the inferior laws that rule our clay : 
The stubborn elements confess her sway ; 
Their little wants, their low desires, refine, 
And raise the mortal to a height divine. 

Not but the human fabric from the birth 
Imbibes a flavour of its parent earth : 
As various tracts enforce a various toil, 
The manners speak the idiom of their soil. 
An iron-race the mountain cliffs maintain, 
Foes to the gentler genius of the plain : 
For where unwearied sinews must be found 
With sidelong plough to quell the flinty ground, 
To turn the torrent's swift-descending flood, 
To brave the savage rushing from the wood, 
What wonder if to patient valour train'd, 
They guard with spirit what by strength they gain'd ? 
And while their rocky ramparts round they see, 
The rough abode of want and liberty, 
(As lawless force from confidence will grow,) 
Insult the plenty of the vales below ? 
What wonder, in the sultry climes, that spread 
Where Nile redundant o'er his summer-bed 



EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT. 231 



From his broad bosom life and verdure flings, 
And broods o'er Egypt with his watery wings, 
If with adventurous oar and ready sail 
The dusky people drive before the gale ; 
Or on frail floats to neighbouring cities ride, 
That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide 



[The following couplet, which was intended to have been 
introduced in the poem on the Alliance of Education and 
Government, is much too beautiful to be lost. — Mason.] 

When love could teach a monarch to be wise, 
And gospel-light first dawn'd from Bullen's eyes. 



STANZAS TO MR. BENTLEY. 

In silent gaze the tuneful choir among, 

Half pleased, half blushing, let the Muse admire, 
While Bentley leads her sister-art along, 

And bids the pencil answer to the lyre. 

See, in their course, each transitory thought 
Fix'd by his touch a lasting essence take ; 

Each dream, in fancy's airy colouring wrought, 
To local symmetry and life awake ! 

The tardy rhymes that used to linger on, 
To censure cold, and negligent of fame, 

In swifter measures animated run, 

And catch a lustre from his genuine flame. 

232 



STANZAS TO MR. BENTLEY. 233 

All ! could they catch his strength, his easy grace, 
His quick creation, his unerring line ; 

The energy of Pope they might efface, 
And Dryden's harmony submit to mine. 

But not to one in this benighted age 

Is that diviner inspiration given, 
That burns in Shakspeare's or in Milton's page, 

The pomp and prodigality of heaven. 

As when conspiring in the diamond's blaze, 
The meaner gems that singly charm the sight, 

Together dart their intermingled rays, 
And dazzle with a luxury of light. 

Enough for me, if to some feeling breast 

My lines a secret sympathy 

And as their pleasing influenc 

A sigh of soft reflection 

20* 



[ODE TO VICISSITUDE.] 

Now the golden morn aloft 

"Waves her dew-bespangled wing, 
With vermeil cheek and whisper soft 

She wooes the tardy spring : 
Till April starts, and calls around 
The sleeping fragrance from the ground 
And lightly o'er the living scene 
Scatters his freshest, tenderest green. 

New-born flocks, in rustic dance, 
Frisking ply their feeble feet ; 

Forgetful of their wintry trance, 
The birds his presence greet : 

But chief, the sky-lark warbles high 

His trembling thrilling ecstasy ; 

234 



ODE TO VICISSITUDE. 235 



And, lessening from the dazzled sight, 
Melts into air and liquid light. 

Rise, my soul ! on wings of fire, 
Rise the rapturous choir among ; 

Hark ! 'tis nature strikes the lyre, 
And leads the general song : 

Yesterday the sullen year ■ 

Saw the snowy whirlwind fly ; 
Mute was the music of the air, 
The herd stood drooping by : 
Their raptures now that wildly flow, 
No yesterday nor morrow know ; 
'Tis man alone that joy descries 
With forward and reverted eyes. 

Smiles on past misfortune's brow 
Soft reflection's hand can trace ; 

And o'er the cheek of sorrow throw 
A melancholy grace ; 

While hope prolongs our happier hour, 

Or deepest shades, that dimly lower 



236 ODE TO VICISSITUDE. 

And blacken round our weary way, 
Gilds with a gleam of distant day. 

Still, where rosy pleasure leads, 

See a kindred grief pursue ; 
Behind the steps that misery treads, 

Approaching comfort view : 
The hues of bliss more brightly glow, 
Chastised by sabler tints of woe ; 
And blended form, with artful strife, 
The strength and harmony of life. 

See the wretch, that long has tost 

On the thorny bed of pain, 
At length repair his vigour lost, 
And breathe and walk again: 
The meanest floweret of the vale, 
The simplest note that swells the gale, 
The common sun, the air, the skies, 
To him are opening paradise. 

Humble quiet builds her cell, 

Near the source whence pleasure flows; 



ODE TO VICISSITUDE. 237 

She eyes the clear crystalline well, 

And tastes it as it goes. 
.... far below the crowd 

Where broad and turbulent it sweeps, 
.... perish in the boundless cleeps. 

Mark where indolence and pride, 

. . . softly rolling, side by side, 
Their dull but daily round : 
****** 



LINES. 

With beauty, with pleasure surrounded, to languish — 
To weep without knowing the cause of my anguish : 
To start from short slumbers, and wish for the morn- 
ing— 
To close my dull eyes when I see it returning ; 
Sighs sudden and frequent, looks ever dejected — 
Words that steal from my tongue, by no meaning 

connected ! 
Ah ! say, fellow-swains, how these symptoms befell 

me? 
They smile, but reply not — sure Delia will tell me ! 

238 



son a. 

Thyrsis, when we parted, swore 
Ere the spring he would return — 

Ah ! what means yon violet flower ! 
And the bud that decks the thoun ! 

'Twas the lark that upward sprung ! 

'Twas the nightingale that sung ! 

Idle notes ! untimely green ! 

Why this unavailing haste ? 
Western gales and skies serene 

Speak not always winter past. 
Cease, my doubts, my fears to move. 
Spare the honour of my love. 



239 



TOPHET. 

Thus Tophet look'd ; so grinn'd the brawling fiend, 
Whilst frighted prelates bow'd and call'd him friend. 
Our mother-church, with half-averted sight, 
Blush'd as she bless'd her griesly proselyte; 
Hosannas rung through hell's tremendous borders, 
And Satan's self had thoughts of taking orders. 



SKETCH OF HIS OWN CHARACTER. 

■WRITTEN IN 1761, AND FOUND IN ONE OF HIS POCKET-BOOKS. 

Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune ; 

He had not the method of making a fortune ; 

Could love, and could hate, so was thought somewhat 

odd ; 
No very great wit, he believed in a God : 
A post or a pension he did not desire, 
But left church and state to Charles Townshend and 

Squire. 

21 241 



THE CANDIDATE; 

OR, THE CAMBRIDGE COURTSHIP. 

When sly Jemmy Twitcher had smugg'd up his face, 
With a lick of court white-wash, and pious grimace, 
A wooing he went, where three sisters of old 
In harmless society guttle and scold. 

"Lord! sister," says Physic to Law, "I declare, 
Such a sheep-biting look, such a pick-pocket air ! 
Not I for the Indies : — You know I'm no prude, — 
But his nose is a shame, — and his eyes are so lewd ! 
Then he shambles and straddles so oddly — I fear — 
No — at our time of life 'twould be silly, my dear." 

"I don't know," says Law, "but methinks for his 
look, 
'Tis just like the picture in Rochester's book ; 

242 



THE CANDIDATE. 243 



Then his character, Phyzzy,— his morals— his life— 
When she died, I can't tell, but he once had a wife. 

They say he's no Christian, loves drinking and w g, 

And all the town rings of his swearing and roaring ! 
His lying and filching, and Newgate-bird tricks ;— 
Not I — for a coronet, chariot and six." 

Divinity heard, between waking and dozing, 
Her sisters denying, and Jemmy proposing : 
From table she rose, and with bumper in hand, 
She stroked up her belly, and stroked down her band— 
"What a pother is here about wenching and roaring ! 

Why, David loved catches, and Solomon w g : 

Did not Israel filch from the Egyptians of old 
Their jewels of silver and jewels of gold ? 
The prophet of Bethel, we read, told a lie : 
He drinks— so did Noah;— he swears— so do I: 
To reject him for such peccadillos, were odd ; 
Besides, he repents— for he talks about G**— 

\To Jemmy.] 
"Never hang down your head, you poor penitent elf, 
Come buss me— I'll be Mrs. Twitcher myself." 



IMPROMPTU, 



SUGGESTED BY A VIEW, IN 1766, OF THE SEAT AND RUINS OF A 
DECEASED NOBLEMAN, AT KINGSGATE, KENT. 

Old, and abandon'd by each venal friend, 
Here H d form'd the pious resolution 

To smuggle a few years, and strive to mend 
A broken character and constitution. 

On this congenial spot he fix'd his choice ; 

Earl Goodwin trembled for his neighbouring sand ; 
Here sea-gulls scream, and cormorants rejoice, 

And mariners, though shipwreck'd, dread to land. 

Here reign the blustering North and blighting East, 
No tree is heard to whisper, bird to sing ; 

Yet Nature could not furnish out the feast, 
Art he invokes new horrors still to bring. 

244 



I M P R M P T U. 245 



Here mouldering fanes and battlements arise, 
Turrets and arches nodding to their fall, 

Unpeopled monasteries delude our eyes, 
And mimic desolation covers all. 

"Ah!" said the sighing peer, "had B — te been true, 
Nor M — 's, R — 's, B — 's friendship vain, 

Far better scenes than these had blest our view, 
And realized the beauties which we feign : 

"Purged by the sword, and purified by fire, 
Then had we seen proud London's hated walls ; 

Owls would have hooted in St. Peter's choir, 
And foxes stunk and litter 'd in St. Paul's." 



IMPROMPTU, 



WHILE WALKING WITH MR. NICHOLLS IN THE SPRING IN THE 
NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CAMBRIDGE. 

There pipes the woodlark, and the song-thrush there 
Scatters his loose notes in the waste of air. 



PART OF AN EPITAPH ON THE WIFE 
OF MASON. 

Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die, 
'Twas e'en to thee ; yet the dread path once trod, 
Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high, 
And bids the pure in heart behold their God. 



EXTEMPORE EPITAPH ON ANNE, COUN- 
TESS OF DORSET. 

Now clean, now hideous, mellow now, now gruff, 
She swept, she hiss'd, she ripen'd, and grew rough, 
At Brougham, Pendragon, Appleby, and Brough. 



THE CHARACTERS OF THE CHRIST- 
CROSS ROW. 

BY A CRITIC, TO MRS. . 

* * # * * * 

Great D draws near — the dutchess sure is come, 
Open the doors of the withdrawing-room ; 
Her daughters deck'd most daintily I see, 
The dowager grows a perfect double D. 
E enters next, and with her Eve appears, 
Not like yon dowager deprest with years ; 
What ease and elegance her person grace, 
Bright beaming, as the evening-star, her face ; 
Queen Esther next — how fair e'en after death, 
Then one faint glimpse of Queen Elizabeth ; 
No more, our Esthers now are naught but Hetties, 
Elizabeths all dwindled into Betties ; 

247 



248 C HEIST-CROSS ROW. 

In vain you think to find them under E, 
They're all diverted into H and B. 
F follows fast the fair — and in his rear, 
See folly, fashion, foppery, straight appear, 
All with fantastic clews, fantastic clothes, 
With fans and flounces, fringe and furbelows. 
Here Grub-street geese presume to joke and jeer, 
All, all, but Grannam Osborne's Gazetteer. 
High heaves his hugeness II ; methinks we see 
Henry the Eighth's most monstrous majesty ; 
But why on such mock grandeur should we dwell ? 
II mounts to heaven, and H descends to hell. 

% * * * 

As H the Hebrew found, so I the Jew, 
See Isaac, Joseph, Jacob, pass in view ; 
The walls of old Jerusalem appear, 
See Israel, and all Judah thronging there. 

^ ^ $z % * 

P pokes his head out, yet has not a pain ; 
Like Punch, he peeps, but soon pops in again ; 
Pleased with his pranks, the Pisgys call him Puck, 
Mortals he loves to prick, and pinch, and pluck ; 
Now a pert prig, he perks upon your face, 
Now peers, pores, ponders, with profound grimace, 



CHRIST- CROSS ROW. 249 



Now a proud prince, in pompous purple drest, 

And now a player, a peer, a pimp, or priest ; 

A pea, a pin, in a perpetual round, 

Now seems a penny, and now shows a pound ; 

Like perch or pike, in pond you see him come, 

He in plantations hangs like pear or plum, 

Pippin or peach ; then perches on the spray, 

In form of parrot, pye, or popinjay. 

P, Proteus-like, all tricks, all shapes can show, 

The pleasantest person in the Christ-Cross row. 

As K a king, Q represents a queen, 

And seems small difference the sounds between ; 

K, as a man, with hoarser accent speaks, 

In shriller notes Q like a female squeaks ; 

Behold K struts, as might a king become, 

Q draws her train along the drawing-room, 

Slow follow all the quality of state, 

Queer Queensbury only does refuse to wait. 

Thus great R reigns in town, while different far, 
Rests in retirement, little rural R ; 
Remote from cities lives in lone retreat, 
With rooks and rabbit burrows round his seat — 



250 



CHRIST-CROSS ROW. 



S sails the SAvan slow down the silver stream. 



So big with weddings, waddles W, 
And brings all womankind before your view : 
A wench, a wife, a widow, and a w — e, 
With woe behind, and wantonness before. 



POEMATA. 



SAPPHIC ODE: TO MR. WEST. 

Barbaras sedes aditure mecum 
Quas Eris semper fovet inquieta, 
Lis ubi late" sonat, et togatum 

iEstuat agmen ; 

Dulcius quanto, patulis sub ulmi 
Hospitee ramis temerei jacentem 
Sic libris horas, tenuique inertes 

Fallere Mus& ? 

Saepe enim curis vagor expedita 

Mente ; dura, blandam meditans Camsenam, 

Vix malo rori, meminive serae 

Cedere nocti; 

251 



252 SAPPHIC ODE. 



Et, pedes quo me rapiunt, in omni 
Colle Parnassum videor videre 
Fertilem sylvse, gelidamque in omni 

Fonte Aganippen. 

Risit et Ver me, facilesque Nymphae 
Nare captantem, nee ineleganti, 
Mane quicquid de violis eundo 

Surripit aura : 

Me reclinatum teneram per herbam ; 
Qua leves cursus aqua cunque ducit, 
Et moras dulci strepitu lapillo 

Nectit in omni. 

Hse novo nostrum fere pectus anno 
Simplices curse tenuere, coelum 
Quamdiu sudum explicuit Favoni 
Purior hora : 

Otia et campos nee adhuc relinquo, 
Nee magis Phoebo Clytie fidelis ; 
(Ingruant venti licet, et senescat 

Mollior aastas.) 



SAPPHIC ODE. 253 



Namque, seu, lsetos hominum labores 
Prataque et montes recreante curru, 
Purpura tractus oriens Eoos 

Vestit, et auro ; 

Sedulus servo veneratus orbem 
Prodigum splendoris ; amoeniori 
Sive dilectam meditatur igne 

Pingere Calpen ; 

Usque dum, fulgore magis magis jam 
Languido circum, variata nubes 
Labitur furtira, viridisque in umbras 
Scena recessit. 

ego felix, vice si (nee unquam 
Surgerem rursus) simili cadentem 
Parca me lenis sineret quieto 

Fallere Letho ! 

Multa flagranti radiisque cincto 
Integris ah ! quam nihil inviderem, 
Cum Dei ardentes medius quadrigas 
Sentit Olympus. 



ALCAIC FRAGMENT. 

lace, ym arum fons, tenero sacros 
Ducentiuin orus ex ammo ; quater 
Felix ! in imo qui scatentem 
Pectore te, pia Nyrnpha, sensit. 



LATIN LINES 

ADDRESSED TO MR. WEST, FROM GENOA. 

Horridos tractus, Boreseque linquens 
Regna Taurini fera, molliorem 
Advehor brumam, Genuaeque amantes 
Litora soles. 

254 



ELEGIAC VERSES, 

OCCASIONED BV THE SIGHT OF THE PLAINS WHERE THE BATTLE 
OF TREBIA "WAS FOUGHT. 

Qua Trebie glaucas salices intersecat unda", 

Arvaque Romanis nobilitata nialis. 
Visus adhuc amnis veteri de clade rubere, 

Et suspirantes ducere moestus aquas ; 
Maurorumque ala, et nigrse increbescere turmse, 

Et pulsa Ausonidum ripa sonare fugai. 

255 



CARMEN AD C. FAVONIUM ZEPHYRINUM. 

Mater rosarum, cui tenerse vigent 
Aurse Favoni, cui Venus it comes 
Lasciva, Nympharum choreis 
Et volucrum celebrata cantu ! 
Die, non inertem fallere qua diem 
Amat sub umbra, seu sinit aureum 
Dormire plectrum, seu retentat 
Pierio Zephyrinus antro 
Furore dulci plenus, et immemor 
Reptantis inter frigora Tusculi 
Umbrosa, vel colles Amici 
Palladia? superantis Albse. 
Dilecta Fauno, et capripedum choris 
Pineta, testor vos, Anio minax 
Qusecunque per clivos volutus 
Prsecipiti tremefecit amne, 



AD C. FAVONIUM ZEPHYRINUM. 257 

Illius altum Tibur, et iEsulae 
Audisse sylvas nomen amabiles, 
Illius et gratas Latinis 
Naisin ingeminasse rupes ; 
Nam me Latinse Naides uvida 
Videre ripa, qua" niveas levi 
Tarn ssepe lavit rore plumas 
Dulce canens Venusinus ales ; 
Mirum ! canenti conticuit nemus, 
Sacrique fontes, et retinent adhuc 
(Sic Musa jussit) saxa molles 
Docta modos, veteresque lauri. 
Mirare nee tu me citharse rudem 
Claudis laborantem numeris : loca 
Amoena, jucundumque ver in- 
compositum docuere carmen ; 
Haerent sub omni nam folio nigri 
Phoebea luci (credite) somnia, 
Argutiusque et lympha et aurse 
Nescio quid solito loquuntur. 

22* 



FRAGMENT OF A 

LATIN POEM ON THE GAURUS. 

Nec procul infelix se tollit in aethera Gaurus, 
Prospiciens vitreum lugenti vertice pontum: 
Tristior ille diu, et veteri desuetus oliva 
Gaurus, pampinegeque eheu jam nescius umbrae ; 
Horrendi tarn saeva premit vicinia montis, 
Attonitumque urget latus, exuritque ferentem. 

Nam fama est olim, media dum rura silebant 
Nocte, Deo victa, et molli perfusa quiete, 
Infremuisse sequor ponti, auditamque per omnes 
Late tellurem surdum immugire cavernas : 
Quo sonitu nemora alta tremunt : tremit excita tuto 
Parthenopsea sinu, flammantisque ora Yesevi. 
At subito se aperire solum, vastosque recessus 

258 



THE GAURUS. 259 



Pandere sub pedibus, nigraque voragine fauces ; 
Turn piceas cinerum glomerare sub sethere nubes 
Yorticibus rapidis, arclentique imbre procellam. 
Prsecipites fugere ferae, perque avia longe 
Sylvarum fugit pastor, juga per deserta, 
Ah, miser ! increpitans saspe alta voce per umbram 
Nequicquain natos, creditque audire sequentes. 
Atque ille excelso rupis de vertice solus 
Respectans notasque domos, et dulcia regna, 
Nil usquam videt infelix prseter mare tristi 
Lumine percussum, et pallentes sulpbure campos 
Fumumque, flammasque, rotataque turbine saxa. 

Quin ubi detonuit fragor, et lux reddita coelo ; 
Meestos confluere agricolas, passuque videres 
Tandem iterum timido deserta requirere tecta : 
Sperantes, si forte oculis, si forte darentur 
Uxorum cineres, miserorumve ossa parentum 
(Tenuia, sed tanti saltern solatia luctus) 
Una colligere et justa componere in urna. 
Uxorum nusquam cineres, nusquam ossa parentum 
(Spem miseram !) assuetosve Lares, aut rura videbunt. 
Quippe ubi planities campi diffusa jacebat ; 



260 THE GAURUS. 



Mons novus : ille supercilium, frontemque favilla 
Incanuin ostentans, ambustis cautibus, sequor 
Subjectum, stragemque suam, maesta arva, minaci 
Despicit imperio, soloque in littore regnat. 

Hinc infame loci nomen, multosque per annos 
Immemor antiquse laudis, nescire labores 
Vomeris, et nullo tellus revirescere cultu. 
Non avium colles, non carmine matutino 
Pastorum resonare ; adeo undique dirus liabebat 
Informes late horror agros saltusque vacantes. 
Saspius et longe detorquens navita proram 
Monstrabat cligito littus, saevseque revolvens 
Funera narrabat noctis, veteremque ruinam. 

Montis adhuc facies manet hirta atque aspera saxis 
Sed furor extinctus jamdudum, et flamma quievit, 
Quse nascenti aderat ; seu forte bituminis atri 
Defluxere olim rivi, atque effoeta lacuna 
Pabula sufficere ardori, viresque recusat ; 
Sive in visceribus meclitans incendia jam nunc 
(Horrendum) arcanis glomerat genti esse future 
Exitio, sparsos tacitusque recolligit ignes. 



THE GAURUS. 261 



Raro per clivos haud secius ordine vicli 
Canescentem oleam : longum post tempus amicti 
Vite virent tumuli ; patriamque revisere gaudens 
Bacchus in assuetis tenerum caput exerit arvis 
Yix tandem, infidoque audet se credere coelo. 



A FAREWELL TO FLORENCE. 

* * * Oh Faesulge amoena 
Frigoribus juga, nee nimium spirantibus auris ! 
Alma quibus Tusci Pallas decus Apennini 
Esse dedit, glauc&que sua" canescere sylvaM 
Non ego vos posthac Ami de valle videbo 
Porticibus circum, et candenti cincta corona 
Villarum long& nitido consurgere dorso, 
Antiquamve iEdem, et veteres prseferre Cupressus 
Mirabor, tectisque super pendentia tecta. 



DIDACTIC POEM UNFINISHED: 

ENTITLED, 

DE PRINCIPLES COGITANDI. 

LIBER PRIMUS. AD FAVONIUM. 

Unde Animus scire incipiat; quibus inchoet orsa 
Principiis seriem rerum, tenuemque catenam 
Mnemosyne : Ratio unde rudi sub pectore tardum 
Augeat imperium ; et primum mortalibus segris 
Ira, Dolor, Metus, et Curse nascantur inanes, 
Hinc canere aggredior. Nee dedignare canentem, 
decus ! Angliacse certe lux altera gentis ! 
Si qu& primus iter monstras, vestigia conor 
Signare incerta;, tremulaque insistere planta. 
Quin potius due ipse (potes namque omnia) sanctum 
Ad limen (si rite" adeo, si pectore puro,) 
Obscurse reserans Naturae ingentia claustra. 

263 



264 DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDI. 

Tu csecas rerum causas, fontemque severum 
Pande, Pater; tibi enim, tibi, veri magne Sacerdos, 
Corda patent hominum, atque altse penetralia Mentis. 

Tuque aures adhibe vacuas, facilesque, Favoni, 
(Quod tibi crescit opus) simplex nee despice carmen, 
Nee vatem : non ilia leves primordia motus, 
Quanquam parva, dabunt. Lsetum vel amabile quicquid 
Usquam oritur, trahit hinc ortum; nee surgit ad auras, 
Quin ea conspirent simul, eventusque secundent. 
Hinc varise vitai artes, ac mollior usus, 
Dulce et amicitise vinclum : Sapientia dia 
Hinc roseum accendit lumen, vultuque sereno 
Humanas aperit mentes, nova gaudia monstrans 
Deformesque fugat curas, vanosque timores : 
Scilicet et rerum crescit pulcherrima Virtus. 
Ilia etiam, quae te (mirum) noctesque diesque 
Assidue fovet inspirans, linguamque sequentem 
Temperat in numeros, atque horas mulcet inertes ; 
Aurea non alia se jactat origine Musa. 

Principio, ut magnum foedus Natura creatrix 
Firmavit, tardis jussitque inolescere membris 
Sublimes animas ; tenebroso in carcere partem 



DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDL 2C5 

Noluit setheream longo torpere veterno : 
Nee per se proprium passa exercere vigorem est, 
Ne sociae molis conjunctos sperneret artus, 
Ponderis oblita, et coelestis conscia flammae. 
Idcirco innumero ductu tremere undique fibras 
Nervorum instituit : turn toto corpore miscens 
Implicuit late ramos, et sensile textum, 
Implevitque humore suo (seu lympha vocanda, 
Sive aura est) tenuis cert£, atque levissinia quaedam 
Vis versatur agens, parvosque infusa canales 
Perfluit ; assidue externis quae concita plagis, 
Mobilis, incussique fidelis nuntia motus, 
Hinc inde accens4 contage relabitur usque 
Ad superas hominis sedes, arcemque cerebri. 
Namque illic posuit solium, et sua templa sacravit 
Mens animi : hanc circum coeunt, densoque feruntur 
Agmine notitiae, simulacraque tenuia rerum : 
Ecce autem natures ingens aperitur imago 
Immensas, variique patent commercia mundi. 

Ac uti longinquis descendunt montibus amnes 
Velivolus Tamisis, flaventisque Indus arense, 
Euphratesque, Tagusque, et opimo flumine Ganges, 
Undas quisque suas volvens, cursuque sonoro 



2G6 DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDI. 

In mare prorumpunt : hos magno acclinis in antro 
Excipit Oceanus, natorumque ordine longo 
Dona recognoscit venientum, ultroque serenat 
Caeruleam faciem, et diffuso marmore ridet. 
Haud aliter species properant se inferre novellas 
Certatim menti, atque aditus quino agmine complent. 

Primas tactus agit partes,, primusque minutas 
Laxat iter caecum turbae, recipitque ruentem. 
Non idem huic modus est, qui fratribus : amplius ille 
Imperium affectat senior, penitusque medullis, 
Visceribusque habitat totis, pellisque recentem 
Funditur in telam, et lat& per stamina vivit. 
Necdum etiam matris puer eluctatus ab alvo 
Multiplices solvit tunicas, et vincula rupit ; 
Sopitus molli somno, tepidoque liquore 
Circumfusus adhuc : tactus tamen aura lacessit 
Jamdudum levior sensus, animamque reclusit. 
Idque magis simul, ac solitum blandumque calorem 
Frigore mutavit coeli, quod verberat acri 
Impete inassuetos artus : turn saevior adstat 
Humanasque comes vitae Dolor excipit ; ille 
Cunctantem frustra^ et tremulo multa ore querentem 
Corripit invadens, ferreisque amplectitur ulnis. 



DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDI. 2C7 



Turn species primuin patefacta est Candida Lucis 
(Usque vices adeo Natura bonique, malique, 
Exsequat, justaque manu sua danma rependit) 
Turn primum, ignotosque bibunt nova lumina soles. 

Carmine quo, Dea, te dicam, gratissima coeli 
Progenies, ortumque tuum ; gemmantia rore 
Ut per prata levi lustras, et floribus halans 
Purpureum Veris gremium, scenamque virentem 
Pingis, et umbriferos colles, et caerula regna ? 
Gratia te, Venerisque Lepos, et rnille Colorum, 
Formarumque chorus sequitur, motusque decentes. 
At caput invisum Stygiis Nox atra tenebris 
Abdidit, horrendaeque simul Formidinis ora, 
Pervigilesque gestus Curarum, atque anxius Angor 
Undique lsetititi florent mortalia corda, 
Purus et arridet largis fulgoribus ^ther. 

Omnia nee tu ideo invalidse se pandere Menti 
(Quippe nimis teneros posset vis tanta diei 
Perturbare, et inexpertos confundere visus) 
Nee capere infantes animos, neu cernere credas 
Tarn variam molem, et mirae spectacula lucis : 
Nescio qu^, tamen hsec oculos dulcedine parvos 



268 DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDL 

Splenclida percussit novitas, traxitque sequentes ; 
Nonne videmus enim, latis inserta fenestris 
Sicubi se Phoebi dispergant aurea tela, 
Sive lucernaruin rutilus colluxerit ardor, 
Extemplo hue obverti aciem, quae fixa repertos 
Haurit inexpletum radios, fruiturque tuendo. 

Altior liuic vero sensu, majorque videtur 
Addita, Judicioque arete connexa potestas, 
Quod simul atque aetas volventibus auxerit annis, 
Hsec simul, assiduo depascens omnia visu, 
Perspiciet, vis quanta loci, quid polleat ordo, 
Juncturae quis honos, ut res accendere rebus 
Lumina conjurant inter se, et mutua fulgent. 

Nee minor in geminis viget auribus insita virtus, 
Nee tantum in curvis quae pervigil excubet antris 
Hinc atque bine (ubi Vox tremefecerit ostia pulsu 
Aeriis invecta rotis) long^que recurset : 
Scilicet Eloquio hsec sonitus, hsec fulminis alas, 
Et mulcere dedit dictis et tollere corda, 
Verbaque metiri numeris, versuque ligare 
Repperit, et quicquid discant Libetlirides undas, 
Calliope quoties, quoties Pater ipse canendi 



DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDI. 269 

Evolvat liquidum carmen, calamove loquenti 
Inspiret dulces animas, digitisque figuret. 

At inedias fauces, et linguae humentia tenrpla 
Gustus habet, qua se insinuet jucunda saporum 
Luxuries, dona Autumni Bacchique voluptas. 

Naribus interea consedit odora hominum vis, 
Docta leves captare auras, Panchaia quales 
Vere novo exhalat, Florseve quod oscula fragrant, 
Roscida, cum Zephyri furtim sub vesperis hora; 
Respondet votis, mollemque aspirat amorem. 

Tot portas altse capitis circumdedit arci 
Alma Parens, sensusque vias per membra reclusit ; 
Haud solas : namque intiis agit vivata facultas, 
QusL sese explorat, contemplatusque repente 
Ipse suas animus vires, momentaque cernit. 
Quid velit, aut possit, cupiat, fugiatve, vicissim 
Percipit imperio gaudens ; neque corpora fallunt 
Morigera ad celeres actus, ac numina mentis. 

Qualis Hamadryadum quondam si forte sororum 
Una, novos peragrans saltus, et devia rura ; 

23* 



270 DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDI. 

(Atque illam in viridi suadet procumbere rip a 
Fontis pura quies, et opaci frigoris umbra) 
Duin prona in latices speculi de margine pendet, 
Mirata est subitam venienti occurrere Nympham : 
Mox eosdem, quos ipsa, artus, eadem ora gerentem 
Una inferre gradus, un§, succedere sylvee 
Aspicit alludens; seseque agnoscit in undis. 
Sic sensu interne- rerum simulacra suarum 
Mens ciet, et proprios observat conscia vultus. 
Nee vero simplex ratio, aut jus omnibus unum 
Constat imaginibus. Sunt quse bina ostia norunt ; 
Hie privos servant aditus ; sine legibus illse 
Passim, qua", data porta, ruunt, animoque propinquant. 
Respice, cui &, cunis tristes extinxit ocellos, 
Sseva et in eternas mersit natura tenebras : 
Illi ignota dies lucet, vernusque colorum 
Offusus nitor est, et vivse gratia formse. 
Corporis at filum, et motus, spatiumque, locique 
Intervalla datur certo dignoscere tactu : 
Quandoquiclem bis iter ambiguum est, et janua du- 
plex, 
Exclusseque oculis species irrumpere tendunt 
Per digitos. Atqui solis concessa potestas 
Luminibus blandoe est radios immittere lucis. 



DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDI. 271 

Undique proporro sociis, quacunque patescit 
Notitise campus, mistse lasciva feruntur 
Turba voluptatis comites, formgeque dolorum 
Terribiles visu, et porta 1 glomerantur in omni. 
Nee vario minus introitu magnum ingruit Illud, 
Quo facere et fungi, quo res existere circum 
Quamque sibi proprio cum corpore scimus, et ire 
Ordine, perpetuoque per sevum flumine labi. 

Nunc age quo valeat pacto, qua" sensilis arte 
Affectare viam, atque animi tentare latebras 
Materies (dictis aures adverte faventes) 
Exsequar. Imprimis spatii quam multa per sequor 
Millia multigenis pandant se corpora seclis, 
Expende. Haud unum invenies, quod mente licebit 
Amplecti, nedum proprius deprendere sensu, 
Molis egens certse, aut solido sine robore, cujus 
Denique mobilitas linquit, texturave partes, 
Ulla nee orarum circumesesura coercet. 
Hsec conjuncta adeo tota compage fatetur 
Mundus, et extremo clamant in limine rerum, 
(Si rebus datur extremum) primordia. Firmat 
Hsec eadem tactus (tactum quis dicere falsum 
Audeat ?) h?ec oculi nee lucidus arguit orbis. 



272 DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDI. 

Inde potestatum enasci densissima proles ; 
Nam quodcunque ferit visum, tangive laborat, 
Quicquid nare bibis, vel concava concipit auris, 
Quicquid lingua sapit, credas hoc omne, necesse est 
Ponderibus, textu, discursu, mole, figura 
Particulas prgestare leves, et semina rerum. 
Nunc oculos igitur pascunt, et luce ministry 
Fulgere cuncta vides, spargique coloribus orbem, 
Dum de sole trahunt alias, aliasque superne 
Detorquent, retroque docent se vertere flammas. 
Nunc trepido inter se fervent corpuscula pulsu, 
Ut tremor gethera per magnum, lateque natantes 
Aurarum fluctus avidi vibrantia claustra 
Auditus queat allabi, sonitumque propaget. 
Coininus interdum non ullo interprete per se 
Nervorum invadunt teneras quatientia fibras, 
Sensiferumque urgent ultro per viscera motum. 
***** 



DE PRINCIPIIS COGITANDI. 273 



LIBER QUARTUS. 

Hactenus hand segnis Naturae arcana retexi 
Musarum interpres, primusque Britanna per arva 
Romano liquidum deduxi flumine rivum. 
Cum Tu opere in medio, spes tanti et causa laboris, 
Linquis, et aeternam fati te condis in umbram ! 
Vidi egomet duro graviter concussa dolore 
Pectora, in alterius non unquam lenta dolorem ; 
Et languere oculos vidi, et pallescere amantem 
Vultum, quo nunquam Pietas nisi rara, Fidesque, 
Altus amor Veri, et purum spirabat Honestum. 
Visa tamen tardi demum inclementia morbi 
Cessare est, reducemque iterum roseo ore Salutem 
Speravi, atque una tecum, dilecte Favoni ! 
Credulus heu longos, ut quondam, fallere Soles : 
Heu spes nequicquam dulces, atque irrita vota ! 
Heu maestos Soles, sine te quos clucere flendo 
Per desideria, et questus jam cogor inanes ! 



274 DE PRINCIPI1S COGITANDI. 

At Tu, sancta anima, et nostri non indiga luctus, 
Stellanti templo, sincerique setheris igne, 
Unde orta es, fruere ; atque 6 s si secura, nee ultra 
Mortalis, notos olim miserata labores 
Respectes, tenuesque vacet cognoscere curas ; 
Hurnanam si forte alta de sede procellam 
Contemplere, metus, stimulosque cupidinis acres, 
Gaudiaque et gemitus, parvoque in corde tumultum 
Irarum ingentem, et ssevos sub pectore fluctus ; 
Respice et has lacrymas, memori quas ictus amore 
Fundo ; quod possum, juxta lugere sepulchrum 
Dum juvat, et mutae vana haec jactare favillse. 



ALCAIC ODE, 



WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE, IN 
DAUPHINY, AUGUST, 1741. 



Oh Tu, severi Religio loci, 
Quocunque gaudes nomine (non leve 
Nativa nam certe fluenta 

Numen habet, veteresque sylvas; 
Prsesentiorem et conspicimus Deum 
Per invias rupes, fera per juga, 
Clivosque prseruptos, sonantes 

Inter aquas, nemorumque noctem ; 
Quam si repostus sub trabe citre& 
Fulgeret auro, et Phidiacfi, manu) 
Salve vocanti rite, fesso et 
Da placidam juveni quietem. 

275 



27G ALCAIC ODE. 



Quod si invidendis sedibus, et frui 
Fortuna sacr& lege silentii 
Vetat volentem, rne resorbens 
In medios violenta fluctus : 
Saltern remoto des, Pater, angulo 
Horas senectge ducere liberas ; 
Tutumque vulgari tumultu 
Surripias, hominumque curis. 



PART OF AN HEROIC EPISTLE 

FROM SOPHONISBA TO MASINISSA. 

Egregium accipio promissi Munus amoris, 

Inque maim mortem, jam fruitura, fero : 
Atque utinam citius mandasses, luce vel una ; 

Transieram Stygios non inhonesta lacus. 
Victoris nee passa toros, nova nupta, mariti, 

Nee fueram fastus, Roma superba, tuos. 
Scilicet hsec partem tibi, Masinissa, triumphi 

Detractam, haec pompee jura minora suae 
Imputat, atque uxor quod non tua pressa catenis, 

Objecta et ssevse plausibus orbis eo : 
Quin tu pro tantis cepisti prsemia factis, 

Magnum Romanae pignus amicitise ! 
Scipiadse excuses, oro, si, tardius utar 

Munere. Non nimium vivere, crede, velim. 

24 277 



278 AN HEROIC EPISTLE. 

Parva mora est, breve sed tempus mea fama requirit 

Detinet hsec amimam cura suprema meam. 
Quae patriae prodesse ineae Regina ferebar, 

Inter Elisaeas gloria prima nurus, 
Ne videar flammae nimis indulsisse secundae, 

Vel nimis liostiles extimuisse manus. 
Fortunam atque annos liceat revocare priores, 

Gaudiaque lieu ! quantis nostra repensa malis. 
Primitiasne tuas meministi atque arma Sypbacis 

Fusa, et per Tyrias ducta tropbaea vias ? 
(Laudis at antiquae forsan meminisse pigebit, 

Quodque decus quondam causa ruboris erit.) 
Tempus ego certe memini, felicia Poenis 

Quo te non puduit solvere vota deis ; 
Mosniaque intrantem vicli : longo agmine duxit 

Turba salutantum, purpureique patres. 
Foeminea ante omnes longe admiratur euntem 

Hseret et aspectu tota caterva tuo. 
Jam flexi, regale decus, per colla capilli, 

Jam decet ardenti fuscus in ore color ! 
Commendat frontis generosa modestia formam, 

Seque cupit laudi surripuisse suse. 
Prima genas tenui signat vix flore juventas, 

Et dextrse soli credimus esse virum. 






AN HEROIC EPISTLE. 279 



Dura faciles gradiens oculos per singula jactas, 

(Seu rexit casus lumina, sive Venus) 
In me (vel certe" visum est) conversa morari 

Sensi ; virgineus perculit ora pudor. 
Nescio quid vultum molle spirare tuendo, 

Credideramque tuos lentius ire pedes. 
Quaerebam, juxta sequalis si dignior esset, 

Quae poterat visus detinuisse tuos : 
Nulla fuit circum sequalis quae dignior esset, 

Asseruitque decus conscia forma suum. 
Pompae finis erat. Tot& vix nocte quievi, 

Sin premat invitae lumina victa sopor, 
Somnus habet pompas, eademque recursat imago ; 

Atque iterum hesterno munere victor ades. 



GREEK EPIGRAM. 



Atfojitsfo; rtoT^vOyipov ixyfiohov aXoos dj/atroaj, 

Taj §swa$ tsfisvrj Tutrtt xvvayi £sas, 
~M.ovvoo ap tvda xvviov £a9siov x%ayy ivaw vXaypoi, 
Arra^fij Nii^av aypotcpav xs%d§ci>. 



TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS. 



STATIUS. THBB. 



LIB. VI. VER. 704—724. 



Third in the labours of the disc came on, 
With sturdy step and slow, Hippomedon ; 
Artful and strong he poised the well-known weight 
By Phlegyas warn'd, and fired by Mnestheus' fate, 
That to avoid, and this to emulate. 
His vigorous arm he tried before he flung, 
Braced all his nerves, and every sinew strung ; 
Then, with a tempest's whirl, and wary eye, 
Pursued his cast, and hurl'd the orb on high : 
The orb on high tenacious of its course, 
True to the mighty arm that gave it force, 

24* 281 



282 TRANSLATION FROM STATIUS. 

Far overleaps all bound, and joys to see 

Its ancient lord secure of victory. 

The theatre's green height and woody wall 

Tremble ere it precipitates its fall ; 

The ponderous mass sinks in the cleaving ground, 

While vales and woods and echoing hills rebound. 

As when from iEtna's smoking summit broke, 

The eyeless Cyclops heaved the craggy rock ; 

Where Ocean frets beneath the dashing oar. 

And parting surges round the vessel roar ; 

'Twas there he aim'd the meditated harm, 

And scarce Ulysses scaped his giant arm. 

A tiger's pride the victor bore away, 

With native spots and artful labour gay, 

A shining border round the margin roll'd, 

And calm'd the terrors of his claws in gold. 

Cambridge, May 8, 1736. 



TASSO GERUS. LIB. 

CANT. XIV. ST. 32. 

"Preser commiato, e si '1 desio gli sprona," &c. 

Dismiss 'd at length, they break through all delay 
To tempt the dangers of the doubtful way; 
And first to Ascalon their steps they bend, 
Whose walls along the neighbouring sea extend, 
Nor yet in prospect rose the distant shore ; 
Scarce the hoarse waves from far were heard to roar. 
When thwart the road a river roll'd its flood 
Tempestuous, and all further course withstood ; 
The torrent stream his ancient bounds disdains, 
Swollen with new force, and late-descending rains. 
Irresolute they stand ; when lo, appears 
The wondrous Sage : vigorous he seem'd in years, 

283 



284 TASSO GERUS. LIB. 

Awful his mien, low as his feet there flows 

A vestment unadorn'd, though white as new-fall'n 

snows ; 
Against the stream the waves secure he trod, 
His head a chaplet bore, his hand a rod. 

As on the Rhine, when Boreas' fury reigns, 
And winter binds the floods in icy chains, 
Swift shoots the village-maid in rustic play 
Smooth, without step, adown the shining way, 
Fearless in long excursion loves to glide, 
And sports and wantons o'er the frozen tide. 

So moved the Seer, but on no harden'd plain ; 
The river boil'd beneath, and rush'd toward the main. 
Where fix'd in wonder stood the warlike pair, 
His course he turn'd, and thus relieved their care : 

"Vast, oh my friends, and difficult the toil 
To seek your hero in a distant soil ! 
No common helps, no common guide ye need, 
Art it requires, and more than winged speed. 
What length of sea remains, what various lands, 
Oceans unknown, inhospitable sands ! 



TASSO GERUS. LIB. 285 



For adverse fate the captive chief has hmTd 
Beyond the confines of our narrow world : 
Great things and full of wonder in your ears 
I shall unfold ; but first dismiss your fears ; 
Nor doubt with me to tread the downward road 
That to the grotto leads, my dark abode." 

Scarce had he said, before the warriors' eyes 
When mountain-high the waves disparted rise ; 
The flood on either hand its billows rears, 
And in the midst a spacious arch appears. 
Their hands he seized, and down the steep he led 
Beneath the obedient river's inmost bed ; 
The watery glimmerings of a fainter day 
Discover'd half, and half conceal'd their way ; 
As when athwart the dusky woods by night 
The uncertain crescent gleams a sickly light. 
Through subterraneous passages they went, 
Earth's inmost cells, and caves of deep descent ; 
Of many a flood they view'd the secret source, 
The birth of rivers rising to their course, 
Whate'er with copious train its channel fills, 
Floats into lakes, and bubbles into rills ; 



286 TASSO GERUS. LIB. 

The Po was there to see, Danubius' bed, 
Euphrates' fount, and Nile's mysterious head. 
Further they pass, where ripening minerals flow, 
And embryon metals undigested glow, 
Sulphureous veins and living silver shine, 
Which soon the parent sun's warm powers refine, 
In one rich mass unite the precious store, 
The parts combine and harden into ore : 
Here gems break through the night with glittering beam, 
And paint the margin of the costly stream, 
All stones of lustre shoot their vivid ray, 
And mix attemper'd in a various day; 
Here the soft emerald smiles of verdant hue, 
And rubies flame, with sapphire's heavenly blue, 
The diamond there attracts the wondrous sight, 
Proud of its thousand dies and luxury of light. 

1738. JEt. 22. 



PROPERTIUS, 



LIB. III. ELEG. V. v. 19. 



Me juvat in prima coluisse Helicona juventa," &c. 



Long as of youth the joyous hours remain, 
Me may Castalia's sweet recess detain, 
Fast by the umbrageous vale lull'd to repose, 
Where Aganippe warbles as it flows ; 
Or roused by sprightly sounds from out the trance, 
I'd in the ring knit hands, and join the Muses' dance. 
Give me to send the laughing bowl around, 
My soul in Bacchus' pleasing fetters bound ; 
Let on this head unfading flowers reside, 
There bloom the vernal rose's earliest pride ; 
And when, our flames commission'd to destroy, 
Age step 'twixt Love and me, and intercept the joy ; 

287, 



288 PROPERTIUS. 



When my changed head these locks no more shall know, 
And all its jetty honours turn to snow ; 
Then let me rightly spell of Nature's ways ; 
To Providence, to Him my thoughts I'd raise, 
Who taught this vast machine its steadfast laws, 
That first, eternal, universal cause ; 
Search to what regions yonder star retires, 
That monthly waning hides her paly fires, 
And whence, anew revived, with silver light 
Relumes her crescent orb to cheer the dreary night : 
How rising winds the face of ocean sweep, 
Where lie the eternal fountains of the deep, 
And whence the cloudy magazines maintain 
Their wintry war, or pour the autumnal rain ; 
How flames perhaps, with dire confusion hurl'd, 
Shall sink this beauteous fabric of the world ; 
What colours paint the vivid arch of Jove ; 
What wondrous force the solid earth can move, 
When Pindus' self approaching ruin dreads, 
Shakes all his pines, and bows his hundred heads ; 
Why does yon orb, so exquisitely bright, 
Obscure his radiance in a short-lived night ; 
Whence the Seven-Sisters' congregated fires, 
And what Bootes' lazy wagon tires ; 



PROPER TI US. 283 



How the rude surge its sandy bounds control ; 

Who measured out the year, and bade the .seasons roll; 

If realms beneath those fabled torments know, 

Pangs without respite, fires that ever glow, 

Earth's monster brood stretch'd on their iron bed. 

The hissing terrors round Alecto's head, 

Scarce to nine acres Tityus' bulk confined, 

The triple dog that scares the shadowy kind, 

All angry heaven inflicts, or hell can feel, 

The pendent rock, Ixion's whirling wheel, 

Famine at feasts, or thirst amid the stream ; 

Or are our fears the enthusiast's empty dream, 

And all the scenes, that hurt the grave's repose, 

But pictured horror and poetic woes. 

These soft inglorious joys my hours engage ; 
Be love my youth's pursuit, and science crown my age. 

1738. JBL 22. 



:; 



PROPERTIUS, 



LIB. II. ELEG. I. T. 17 



"Quod mihi si tantuni, Maecenas, fata dedissent," &c. 

Yet would the tyrant Love permit me raise 

My feeble voice, to sound the victor's praise, 

To paint the hero's toil, the ranks of war, 

The laurell'd triumph and the sculptured car; 

No giant race, no tumult of the skies, 

No mountain-structures in my verse should rise, 

Nor tale of Thebes, nor Ilium there should be, 

Nor how the Persian trod the indignant sea ; 

Not Marius' Cimbrian wreaths would I relate, 

Nor lofty Carthage struggling with her fate. 

Here should Augustus great in arms appear, 

And thou, Mecsenas, be my second care ; 

Here Mutina from flames and famine free, 

And there the ensanguined wave of Sicily, 
200 



PKOPERTIUS. 291 



And sceptred Alexandria's captive shore, 

And sad Philippi, red with Roman gore : 

Then, while the vaulted skies loud ios rend, 

In golden chains should loaded monarchs bend, 

And hoary Nile with pensive aspect seem 

To mourn the glories of his sevenfold stream, 

While prows, that late in fierce encounter met, 

Move through the sacred way and vainly threat, 

Thee too the Muse should consecrate to fame, 

And with her garlands weave thy ever-faithful name. 

But nor Callimachus' enervate strain 
May tell of Jove, and Phlegra's blasted plain ; 
Nor I with unaccustom'd vigour trace 
Back to its source divine the Julian race. 
Sailors to tell of winds and seas delight, 
The shepherd of his flocks, the soldier of the fight, 
A milder warfare I in verse display ; 
Each in his proper art should waste the day : 
Nor thou my gentle calling disapprove, 
To die is glorious in the bed of Love. 

Happy the youth, and not unknown to fame, 
Whose heart has never felt a second flame. 



292 PROPERTIUS. 



Oh, might that envied happiness be mine ! 

To Cynthia all my wishes I confine ; 

Or if, alas ! it be my fate to try 

Another love, the quicker let me die : 

But she, the mistress of my faithful breast, 

Has oft the charms of constancy confest, 

Condemns her fickle sex's fond mistake, 

And hates the tale of Troy for Helen's sake. 

Me from myself the soft enchantress stole ; 

Ah ! let her ever my desires control, 

Or if I fall the victim of her scorn, 

From her loved door may my pale corse be borne. 

The power of herbs can other harms remove, 

And find a cure for every ill, but love. 

The Lemnian's hurt Machaon could repair, 

Heal the slow chief, and send again to war ; 

To Chiron Phoenix owed his long-lost sight, 

And Phoebus' son recall' d Androgeon to the light 

Here arts are vain, e'en magic here must fail, 

The powerful mixture and the midnight spell ; 

The hand that can my captive heart release, 

And to this bosom give its wonted peace, 

May the long thirst of Tantalus allay, 

Or drive the infernal vulture from his prey. 



PROPER TIUS. 293 



For ills unseen what remedy is found ? 
Or who can probe the undiscover'd wound ? 
The bed avails not, nor the leech's care, 
Nor changing skies can hurt, nor sultry air. 
'Tis hard the elusive symptoms to explore : 
To-day the lover walks, to-morrow is no more ; 
A train of mourning friends attend his pall, 
And wonder at the sudden funeral. 

When then the fates that breath they gave shall 

claim, 

And the short marble but preserve a name, 

A little verse my all that shall remain ; 

Thy passing courser's slacken'd speed restrain; 

(Thou envied honour of thy poet's days, 

Of all our youth the ambition and the praise !) 

Then to my quiet urn awhile draw near, 

And say, while o'er that place you drop the tear, 

Love and the fair were of his youth the pride ; 

He lived, while she was kind; and when she frown'd, 

he died. 

April, 1742. JEt. 26. 



25* 



IMITATION OF AN ITALIAN SONNET 
OF SIGNIOR ABBATE BUONDELMONTE. 

Spesso Amor sotto la forma 
D'amista ride, e s'asconcle : 
Poi si mischia, e si confonde 
Con lo sdegno, e col rancor. 
In Pietade ei si trasforma ; 
Par trastullo, e par dispetto : 
Ma nel suo diverso aspetto 
Sempr' egli, e 1' istesso Amor. 

Lusit amicitise interdum velatus amictu, 
Et bene composita veste fefellit Amor. 

Mox irse assumpsit cultus, faciemque minantem, 
Inqne odium versus, versus et in lacrymas : 

Ludentem fuge, nee lacrymanti, aut crede furenti ; 
Idem est dissimili semper in ore Deus. 

291 



PETRARCA, 



PART I. SONETTO 170. 



"Lasso ch' i' ardo, ed altri non mel crede;" &c. 



Uror, io ; veros at nemo credidet ignes : 

Quin credunt omnes ; dura sed ilia negat, 
Ilia negat, soli volumus cui posse probare ; 

Quin videt, et visos improba dissimulat. 
Ah, durissima mi, sed et, ah, pulcherrima rerum ! 

Nonne animam in misera, Cynthia, fronte vides ? 
Omnibus ilia pia est ; et, si non fata retassent, 

Tarn longas mentem flecteret ad lacrymas. 
Sed tamen has lacrymas, hunc tu, quern spreveris, 
ignem, 

Carminaque auctori non bene culta suo, 
Turba futurorum non ignorabit amantum : 

295 



296 PETRARCA. 



Nos duo, cumque erimus parvus uterque cinis, 
Jamque faces, elieu ! oculorum, et frigida lingua, 

Hse sine luce jacent, imrnemor ilia loqui; 
Infelix musa seternos spirabit am ores, 

Ardebitque urn;! multa favilla mea. 



FROM THE ANTHOLOGIA GRiECA. 



EDIT. HEN. STEPH. 1566. 



IN BACCH.E FURENTIS STATUAM. 

Credite, non viva est Msenas ; non spirat imago : 
Artificis rabiem miscuit sere manus. 



IN ALEXANDRUM, ./ERE EFFICTUM. 

Quantum auclet, Lysippe, manus tua •! surgit in sere 
Spiritus, atque oculis bellicus ignis adest : 

Spectate hos vultus, miserisque ignoscite Persis : 
Quid mirum, imbelles si leo sparsit oves ? 

IN MEDE^I IMAGINEM, nobile timomachi opus. 

En ubi Mecleae varius dolor sestuat ore, 

Jam que animum nati, jam que maritus, babent ! 

297 



298 FROM ANTHOLOGIA GR.SECA. 

Succenset, miseret, medio exardescit amore, 
Dum furor inque oculo gutta minante tremit. 

Cernis adhuc dubiam ; quid enim ? licet impia matris 
Colchidos, at non sit dextera Timomachi. 

IN NIOBES STATUAM. 

Fecerat e viva lapidem me Jupiter ; at me 
Praxiteles vivam reddidit e lapide. 



A NYMPH OFFERING A STATUE OF HERSELF TO 

VENUS. 

Te tibi, sancta, fero nudam ; formosius ipsa 
Cum tibi, quod ferrem, te, Dea, nil liabui. 



IN AMOREM DORMIENTEM. 

Docte puer vigiles mortalibus addere curas, 
Anne potest in te somnus habere locum? 

Laxi juxta arcus, et fax suspensa quiescit, 

Dormit et in pharetra" clausa sagitta sua ; 

Longe' mater abest ; longe Cythereia turba : 
Verum ausint alii te prope ferre peclem, 



FROM ANTHOLOGIA GRJ1CA. 299 

Non ego ; nam metui valde, mihi, perfide, quiddam 
Forsan et in somnis ne meditere mali. 

FROM A FRAGMENT OF PLATO. 

Itur in Idalios tractus, felicia regna, 

Fundit ubi densam myrtea sylva comam, 
Intus Amor teneram visus spirare quietem, 

Dum roseo roseos imprimit ore toros ; 
Sublimem procul a ramis pendere pharetram, 

Et de languidula" spicula lapsa manu, 
Vidimus, et risu molli diducta labella 

Murmure quae assiduo pervolitabat apis. 

IN FONTEM AQUiE CALIDiE. 

Sub platanis puer Idalius prope fluminis undam 

Dormiit, in ripa deposuitque facem. 
Tempus adest, sociae, Nympharuin audentior una, 

Tempus adest, ultra quid dubitamus? ait. 
Ilicet incurrit, pestem ut divumque hominumque 

Lampada collectis exanimaret aquis : 
Demens ! nam nequiit sgevam restinguere flammam 

Nympha, sed ipsa ignes traxit, et inde calet. 



300 FROM ANTHOLOGIA GRiECA. 

Irrepsisse suas murem videt Argus in sedes, 
Atque ait, heus, a me nunquid, amice, velis ? 

Ille autem ridens, metuas nihil, inquit ; apud te, 
bone, non epulas, hospitium petimus. 



Hanc tibi Rufinus mittit, Rodoclea, coronam, 
Has tibi decerpens texerat ipse rosas ; 

Est viola, est anemone, est suave-rubens hyacynthus, 
Mistaque Narcisso lutea caltha suo : 

Sume; sed aspiciens, ah, fidere desine formae; 
Qui pinxit, brevis est, sertaque teque, color. 



AD AMOREM. 

Paulisper vigiles, oro, compesce dolores, 

Respue nee musse supplicis aure preces ; 
Oro brevem lacrymis veniam, requiemque furori 

Ah, ego non possum vulnera tanta pati ! 
Intima flamma, vides, miseros depascitur artus, 

Surgit et extremis spiritus in labiis: 
Quod si tarn tenuem cordi est exsolvere vitam, 

Stabit in opprobrium sculpta querela tuum. 



FROM ANTHOLOGIA GR.ECA. 301 



Juro perque faces istas, arcumque sonantem, 
Spiculaque hoc unum figere clocta jecur ; 

Heu fuge crudelem puerum, ssevasque sagittas I 
Huic fuit exitii causa, viator, Amor. 



NOTES. 



Page 105. Commendatory Poems. 

The Sonnet by the Rev. John Mitford is taken from 
the Aldine Edition : and the Stanzas by the Rev. John 
Moultrie from the Illustrated Eton Edition. The latter 
poem is given entire, although only part of it refers to 
Gray, (Stan. tx. to xxi.) In other parts of the poem 
there will be recognised allusions to a later and to an 
earlier Etonian, of very different kind of celebrity. It may 
be proper to explain that stanzas vi. to IX. refer to the 
late Marquess Wellesley, Richard, the elder brother of 
the Duke of "Wellington. After a long public career, 
distinguished by many and various political services, in 
civil life he gave a remarkable proof of the permanence of 
Eton training, and of fine scholarship, in his " Primitive et 
Jieliquice," a volume of Latin poems, printed for private 
distribution in the eighty-first year of his age. The beauty 
and classical correctness of these compositions have placed 
Lord Wellesley in the first rank of modern Latin versifiers. 

26* 305 



306 NOTES. 



He died, Sept. 26, 1842, at the age of eighty-three, having 
expressed his affection for Eton, by the desire in his Will 
to be buried within the precincts of the ancient seminary 
where he had received his early education — a request which 
was fulfilled by his funeral in the Chapel of Eton College. 
See Pearce's Life of Lord Wellesley, vol. iii. ad fin., and 
Creasy's Memoirs of Eminent Etonians. 

The fine poetic comment — so true in judgment and so 
beautiful in feeling — upon the character and life of Shel- 
ley, will be recognised in the stanzas xxn. to xxx. — R. 

Page 129. O'er-canopies the glade. 

A bank o'er-canopied with luscious woodbine. Mids. N. 
Dr. act ii. sec. 2. — Gray. 

Page 130. And float amid the liquid noon. 
"Nare per asstatem liquidam." Greorg. iv. 59. — Gray. 

Page 130. Quick glancing to the sun. 
" Sporting with quick glance 
Show to the sun their waved coats dropped with gold." 
Par. Lost, vii. 410. — Gray. 

Page 131. To Contemplation's sober eye. 

"While insects from the threshold preach. " Greene, in 
"The Grotto"; Dodsley, Misc. v. p. 161. — Gray. 

In a letter to H. Walpole (Walpole's Works, v. p. 395), 
Gray acknowledges obligations to Green's "Grotto," for the 



NOTES. 307 



thought on which the Ode to Spring turns. "It imprinted 
itself," he says, "on my memory, and, forgetting the author, 
I took it for my own." — R. 

Page 132. 
See Wordsworth's criticism on the diction of this Sonnet, 
in the preface to the "Lyrical Ballads." Appendix to the 
collective edition of Wordsworth's Poetical Works. — R. 

Page 133. Her Henry's holy shade. 

So in the Bard, ii. 3 : "And spare the meek usurper's 
holy head." And in Install. Ode, iv. 12 : " the murdered 
saint." So Rich. III. ac. v. sc. 1 : " Holy King Henry." 
And act iv. sc. iv : " When holy Henry died." This epi- 
thet has a peculiar propriety, as Henry the Sixth, though 
never canonized, was regarded as a saint. See Barrington 
on the Statutes, p. 416, and Douce. Illust. of Shaksp. ii. 
38. "Yea and holy Henry lying at Windsor." Barclay. 
Eclog. p. 4, fol. 

Page 134. And redolent of joy and youth. 
"And bees their honey redolent of sj>ring." Dryden's 
Fable on the Pythag. System. — Gray. 

Page 137. And moody Madness laughing wild. 

" Madness laughing in his ireful mood:" Dryden, Pal. 
and Arc. (b. ii. p. 43, ed. Aik.) — Gray. 

I am tempted to introduce here Lord Wellesley's lines. 



308 NOTES. 



entitled u Salix Bahylonica" for the sake of the affectionate 
recollections of Eton so finely expressed in them, and the 
no less admirable aspirations for the welfare of the great 
school, which was endeared to him both by personal grati- 
tude and a sense of its influence on the destinies of his 
country. The occasion of these lines was the sight of 
some willows overhanging the Thames, in the grounds of 
the house occupied by Lord Wellesley, near Eton : they are 
of the species introduced from the East, called "The Willow 
of Babylon:" — 

Passis moesta comis, formosa doloris imago, 

Quec, flenti similis, pendet in amne salix, 
Euphratis nata in ripa Babylone sub alta 

Dicitur Hebrseas sustinuisse lyras ; 
Cum terra ignotti proles Solymsea, refugit 

Divinum patrise jussa movere melos ; 
Suspensisque lyris, et luctu muta, sedebat, 

In lacrymis memorans Te, veneranda Sion ! 
Te, dilecta Sion ! frustra sacrata Jehovse, 

Te, prsesenti JEdes irradiata Deo ! 
Nunc pede barbarico, et manibus temerata profanis, 

Nunc orbata Tuis, et taciturna Domus ! 
At tu pulchra Salix Thamesini littoris hospes, 

Sis sacra, et nobis pignora sacra feras ! 
QuS. cecidit Judasa, mones, captiva sub ira, 

Victricem stravit quae Babylona manus ; 
Tnde, doces, sacra et ritus servare Parentum, 

Juraque, et antiqua vi stabilire Fidem. 



NOTES. 309 



Me quoties curas suadent lenire seniles 

Umbra tua et viridi ripa beata toro, 
Sit mini, primitiasque meas tenuesque, triumpkos 

Sit revocare tuos, dulcis Etona ! dies. 
Auspice, te, summae mirari culmina famse, 

Et purum antique lucis adire jubar, 
Edidici Puer, et jam primo in limine vitas — 

Ingenuas verse laudis amare vias : 
juncta Aonidum lauro praecepta salutis 

JEternae ! et Musis consociata Fides ! 
felix Doctrina ! et divina insita luce; 

Quag tuleras animo lumina fausta nieo ! 
Incorrupta, precor, maneas, atque integra, neu te 

Aura regat populi, neu novitatis amor : 
Stet quoque prisca Domus; (neque enim manus impia 

Floreat in mediis intemerata minis. [tangat;) 

Det Patribus Patres, populoque clet inclyta Cives, 

Eloquiumque Foro, Judiciisque decus, 
Consiliisque animos, niagnaeque det ordine Genti 

Immortalem alta cum pietate Fidem. 
Floreat, intacta" per postera secula fama, 

Cura diu Patriae, Cura paterna Dei. — R. 

Page 141. Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat. 
On a favourite cat called Selima, that fell into a China 
tub with gold fishes in it, and was drowned, MS. Wharton. 
Walpole, after the death of Gray, placed the China vase 
on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines of the 
ode for its inscription. 



310 NOTES. 



Page 144. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. 

Mr. Nicholls, in his "Reminiscences of Gray," writes: 
" When I found in the Purgatorio of Dante the verses from 
which the beginning of the Elegy is imitated, 

's'odi squilla di lontano 
Che paia '1 giorno pianger, che si muore ;" 

he (Gray) acknowledged the imitation, and said he had 
at first written 'tolls the knell of dying day/ but changed 
it to 'parting' to avoid the concetto." Works of Gray, 
Aldine edit. v. p. 45. — R. 

Page 149. Muttering his wayward fancies ivoidd 7ie rove. 

The reading adopted by Mr. Mitford in the Aldine 
Edition is, "he would rove": it is changed on the autho- 
rity of the facsimile of the poet's handwriting in Ma- 
thias's Edition of Gray. A correspondent of "Notes and 
Queries," No. 14, Feb. 2d, 1850, also states, that at the sale 
of Mason's collection of Gray's books and MS., in 1845, he 
purchased Gray's copy of Dodsley's collection, (2d edition, 
1758,) with corrections in the poet's own hand, and that 
among these the 27th stanza is altered from "he would 
rove" to " would he rove." — R. y 

Page 153. A Long Story. 

Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-yard, previous to its 
publication, was handed about in manuscript; and bad 
among other admirers the Lady Cobham, who resided at 



NOTES. 311 



the mansion-house at Stoke-Pogeis. The performance in- 
ducing her to wish for the author's acquaintance, her rela- 
tion, Miss Speed, and Lady Schaub, then at her house, 
undertook to effect it. These two ladies waited upon the 
author at his aunt's solitary habitation, where he at that 
time resided ; and not finding him at home, they left a card 
behind them. Mr. Gray, surprised at such a compliment, 
returned the visit. And as the beginning of this acquaint- 
ance bore some appearance of romance, he soon after gave a 
humorous account of it in the verses, which he entitled 
"A Long Story." Printed in 1753, with Mr. Bentley's 
designs, and repeated in a second edition. 

This Poem was rejected by Gray in the collection pub- 
lished by himself; and though published afterwards by 
Mason in his Memoirs of Gray, he placed it among the 
Letters, together with the Posthumous Pieces ; not thinking 
himself authorized to insert among the Poems, what the 
author had rejected. 

See a Sequel to the Long Story in Hakewill's History of 
Windsor, by John Penn, Esq., and a farther Sequel to that, 
by the late Laureate, H. J. Pye, Esq. 

Page 153. An ancient pile of building stands. 

The mansion-house at Stoke-Pogeis, then in the posses- 
sion of Viscountess Cobham. The house formerly be- 
longed to the earls of Huntingdon and the family of Hatton. 
— Mason. Sir Edmond Coke's mansion at Stoke-Pogeis, 
now the seat of Mr. Penn, was the scene of Gray's Long 



312 NOTES. 



Story. The antique chimneys have been allowed to remain 
as vestiges of the poet's fancy, and a column with a statue 
of Coke marks the former abode of its illustrious inhabi- 
tant. D'lsraeli, Cur. of Lit. (New Ser.) i. 482. Coke 
married Lady Hatton. relict of Sir William Hatton, sister 
of Lord Burlington. 

Page 153. My grave Lord-Keeper led the braids. 

Sir Christopher Hatton, promoted by Queen Elizabeth 
for his graceful person and fine dancing. — Gray. 

Brawls were a sort of French figure-dance, then in vogue. 
See England's Helicon, p. 101; Brown's Poems, vol. iii. 
p. 149, ed. Thompson ; and the note by Steevens to Love's 
Lab. Lost, act iii. sc. 1. And so Ben Jonson, in a Masque, 
vol. vi. p. 27, ed. Whalley : — 

" And thence did Venus learn to lead 
The Idalian brawls." 
But see more particularly Marston, Malcontent, act iv. sc. 
2, where it is described : — 

"We have forgot the brawl," &c. 

See Dodsley, Old Plays, vol. ii. p. 210. 

Page 155. Fame, in the shape of Mr. P — t. 

It has been said, that this gentleman, a neighbour and 
acquaintance of Gray's in the country, was much displeased 
with the liberty here taken with his name : yet, surely, 
without any great reason. — Mason. Mr. Kobert Purt was 
Fellow of King's Coll. Cant. 1738, A. B. 1742, A. M. 1746, 



NOTES. 313 



was an assistant at Eton school, tutor to Lord Baltimore's 
son there, and afterwards to the Duke of Bridgewater; in 
1749 he was presented to the rectory of Settrington in 
Yorkshire which he held with Dorrington in the same 
county. He died in April, 1752, of the small pox. — Isaac 
Reed. 

Page 155. She'd issiie out her high commission. 
Henry the Fourth, in the fourth year of his reign, issued 
out the following commission against this species of vermin : 
"And it is enacted, that no master-rimour, minstrel, or 
other vagabond, be in any wise sustained in the land of 
Wales, to make commoiths, or gatherings upon the people 
there." ''Vagabond/' says Bitson, "was a title to which 
the profession had been long accustomed." 

"Beggars they are with one consent, 
And rogues by act of parliament." 

Pref. to Anc. Songs, p. xi. 

Page 158. Tyack has often seen the sight. 

Tyack, the housekeeper. — G. 

The edition of Gray, published by Sharpe, London, 1821, 
adds the following note : — 

" Her name, which has hitherto, in all editions of Gray's 
poems, been written ' Styack,' is corrected from her grave- 
stone in the churchyard, and the accounts of contemporary 
persons in the parish ; housekeepers are usually styled 
' Mrs.' ; the final S doubtless caused the name to be misap- 
prehended and misspelt." — JR. 



314 NOTES. 



Page 159. Disproved the arguments of Squib. 
Squib, groom of the chamber. — G. 

Page 159. Groom. 

Groom, the steward. — G. 

Sharpe's edition further mentions: "The former has 
hitherto been styled groom of the chamber, and the latter 
steward; but the legend on a gravestone close to Tyack's, is 
to the memory of William Groom, and appears to offer 
evidence that Gray mistook the name of the one for the 
office of the other." — R. 



Page 159. He stood as mute as poor Macleane. 

Macleane, a famous highwayman, hanged the week be- 
fore. — G. 

Page 161. The Progress of Poesy. 

Gray, in communicating this ode to his friend Dr. Whar- 
ton, in a letter, dated December 26, 1754, entitled it "Ode 
in the Greek Manner." — R. 

When the author first published this and the following 
ode, he was advised, even by his friends, to subjoin some 
few explanatory notes; but had too much respect for the 
understanding of his readers to take that liberty. — Gray. 



NOTES. 



315 



Page 161. Awake, JEolian lyre, awake. 
"Awake, my glory : awake, lute and harp." 

David's Psalms. — Gray. 
"Awake, awake, my lyre, 
And tell thy silent master's humble tale." 

Cowley, Ode of David, vol. ii. p. 423. 
Pindar styles his own poetry, with its musical accompa- 
niments, AtoXtj fio%7iri, AiofaSis #op§cu, AioXlSiov rtvoal avXtiv, 

JEolian song, iEolian strings, the breath of the iEolian 
flute. — Gray. 

The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are 
united. The various sources of poetry, which gives life 
and lustre to all it touches, are here described; its quiet 
majestic progress enriching every subject (otherwise dry 
and barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant harmony 
of numbers ; and its more rapid and irresistible course when 
swoln and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous pas- 
sions. — Gray. 

Page 162. Oh ! Sovereign of the willing soul. 

Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the 
soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of 
Pindar. — Gray. 



Page 162. Perching on the sceptered hand. 

This is a weak imitation of some beautiful lines in the 
same ode. — Gray. 



316 NOTES. 



Page 162. Thee tlie voice, the dance, obey. 

Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in 
the body. — Gray. 

Page 162. Glance their many-tioinlding feet. 

Horn. Od. 0. ver. 265. — Gray. 

Page 163. The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love. 
Aa/ATtso 6 £7ti rtoptyvp&'flOt, 
Uapst-fjUi (J)wj tpwfoj. 
Phrynicus apucl Athenseum. — Gray. 

" lumenqwe juventas 

Purpureum, et Igetos oculis afflarat honores." 

Virg. Mn. i. 594.— W. 

Page 163. Man's feeble race what ills await. 

To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the 
Muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that 
sends the day, by its cheerful presence, to dispel the gloom 
and terrors of the night. — Gray. 

Page 164. Till down the eastern cliffs afar. 

" Or seen the morning's well appointed star 
Come marching up the eastern hills afar." 

Cowley. — Gray. 

The couplet from Cowley has been wrongly quoted by 



NOTES. 317 

Gray, and so continued by his different editors. It occurs 
in Brutus, an ode, stan. iv. p. 171, vol. 1, Hurd's ed. : — 

"One would have thought 't had heard the morning crow, 
Or seen her well-appointed star 
Come marching up the eastern hills afar." 

In Gray's letter to Dr. Wharton, containing a Journal of 
his Tour to the Lakes, he says : " While I was here, a little 
shower fell, red clouds came marching up the hills from the 
east," &c. Aldine edition, vol. iv. p. 153. 

Page 164. In climes beyond the solar road. 

Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest 
and most uncivilized nations : its connection with liberty, 
and the virtues that naturally attend on it. [See the Erse, 
Norwegian, and Welsh fragments, the Lapland and Ameri- 
can songs.] 

"Extra anni solisque vias — " Yirg. Mxi. vi. 795. 
"Tutta lontana dal camin del sole." Petr. Canz. 2. — Gray. 

Page 165. Woods, that wave o'er Delhi's steep. 
Progress of poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy 
to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writ- 
ings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir 
Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy, and formed their 
taste there. Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton 
improved on them : but this school expired soon after the 
Restoration, and a new one arose on the French model, 
which has subsisted ever since. — Gray. 



318 NOTES. 



Page 165. In thy green lap was Nature's Barling laid. 

" Nature's darling." Shakspeare. — Gray. This expres- 
sion occurs in Cleveland's Poems, p. 314 : — 

" Here lies within this stony shade, 
Nature's darling ; whom she made 
Her fairest model, her brief story 
In him heaping all her glory." 
Stat. Theb. iv. 1786, "At puer in gremio vernas telluris." 

" The flowery May, who from her green lap throws 
The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose." 

Milton, Son. on May Morn. — Gray. 

Page 166. Nor second He, that rode sublvrne. 
Milton, P. L. vi. 771.— Gray. 

Page 166. He pass' d the flaming bounds of place and time. 

"Flamniantia moenia mundi," Lucret. i. 74. — Gray. 
See also Stat. Silv. iv. 3, 156: "Ultra sidera, flammeumque 
solem." And Cicero de Finibus, ii. 31. Hor. Epist. I. xiv. 9. 

Page 166. The living throne, the sapphire, blaze. 

" For the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. 
And above the firmament that was over their heads was the 
likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone. 
This was the appearance of the glory of the Lord." Ezek. 
i. 20, 26, 2S.— Gray. 



NOTES. 319 



Page 166. Closed his eyes in endless night. 

Horn. Od. ©. ver. 64. — Gray. 



Page 167. With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding 
pace. 

"Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" — Job. 
This verse and the foregoing are meant to express the 
stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes. 
— Gray. 

Gray, in his Treatise, entitled, "Some Remarks on the 
Poems of Lydgate," speaks of "Dryden, in whose admira- 
ble ear the music of our old versification still sounded." 
Gray's Works, Aldine edition, v. p. 803. — E. 

Page 167. Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. 

"Words that weep, and tears that speak." Cowley, 
Prophet, vol. i. p. 113. — Gray. 

Page 167. But ah ! 'tis heard no more. 

We have had in our language no other odes of the sub- 
lime kind, than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day; for 
Cowley, who had his merit, yet wanted judgment, style, 
and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope is not worthy 
of so great a man. Mr. Mason, indeed, of late days, has 
touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in 



320 NOTES. 

some of his choruses; above all in the last of Caracta- 
cus : — 

"Hark ! heard ye not yon footstep dread?" &c. — Gray. 

Page 167. That the Theban eagle bear. 

Ai6s rtpos 6pvi%a &cov, Olymp. ii. 159. Pindar compares 
himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak 
and clamour in vain below, while it pursues its flight, re- 
gardless of their noise. — Gray. 

Page 168. Tlie Bard. 

This Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that 
Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that 
country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be 
put to death. — Gray. 

The original argument of this ode, as Mr. Gray had set 
it down in one of the pages of his common-place book, 
was as follows: "The army of Edward I., as they march 
through a deep valley, (and approach Mount Snowclon, MS.) 
are suddenly stopped by the appearance of a venerable 
figure seated on the summit of an inaccessible rock, who, 
with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all 
the misery and desolation (desolation and misery, Ms.) 
which he had brought on his country; foretells the misfor- 
tunes of the Norman race, and with prophetic spirit de- 
clares, that all his cruelty shall never extinguish the noble 
ardour of poetic genius in this island; and that men shall 
never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in im- 



NOTES. 321 



mortal strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and 
boldly censure tyranny and oppression. His song ended, 
he precipitates himself from the mountain, and is swallowed 
up by the river that rolls at its foot." 

"Mr. Smith, the musical composer and worthy pupil of 
Mr. Handel, had once an idea of setting this ode, and of 
having it performed by way of serenata or oratorio. A 
common friend of his and Mr. Gray's interested himself 
much in this design, and drew out a clear analysis of the 
ode, that Mr. Smith might more perfectly understand the 
poet's meaning. He conversed also with Mr. Gray on the 
subject, who gave him an idea of the overture, and marked 
also some passages in the ode, in order to ascertain which 
should be recitative, which air, what kind of air, and how 
accompanied. This design was, however, not executed; 
and therefore I shall only (in order to give the reader a 
taste of Mr. Gray's musical feelings) insert in this place 
what his sentiments were concerning the overture. 'It 
should be so contrived as to be a proper introduction to the 
ode; it might consist of two movements, the first descrip- 
tive of the horror and confusion of battle, the last a march 
grave and majestic, but expressing the exultation and inso- 
lent security of conquest. This movement should be com- 
posed entirely of wind instruments, except the kettle-drum 
heard at intervals. The da capo of it must be suddenly 
broke in upon, and put to silence by the clang of the harp 
in a tumultuous rapid movement, joined with the voice, all 
at once, and not ushered in by any symphony. The har- 



322 NOTES. 



mony may be strengthened by any other stringed instru- 
ment ; but the harp should everywhere prevail, and form 
the continued running accompaniment, submitting itself to 
nothing but the voice.' " — Mason. 

Page 168. They mock the air with idle state. 

"Mocking the air with colours idly spread." 

King John, act v. sc. 1. — Gray. 

Page 168. Helm, nor hauberk's hoisted mail. 

The hauberk was a texture of steel ringlets, or rings in- 
terwoven, forming a coat of mail that sat close to the body, 
and adapted itself to every motion. — Gray. 

Page 168. Such were the sounds that o'er the crested "pride. 

"The crested adder's pride." 

Dryden, Indian Queen. — Gray. 

Page 168. As down the steep of Snoivdon's shaggy side. 

Snowdon was a name given by the Saxons to that moun- 
tainous tract which the Welsh themselves call Craigian- 
eryri : it included all the highlands of Caernarvonshire and 
Merionethshire, as far east as the river Conway. E. Hygden, 
speaking of the castle of Conway, built by King Edward 
the First, says, " Ad ortum amnis Conway ad clivum montis 
Erery;" and Matthew of Westminster, (ad ann. 1283,) 
" Apud Aberconway ad pedes montis Snowdoniae fecit erigi 
castrum forte." — Gray. 



NOTES. 323 



Page 168. Stout Glos'ter stood aghast in speechless trance. 

Gilbert de Clare, surnanied the Red, Earl of Gloucester 
and Hertford, son-in-law to King Edward. — Gray. 

Page 168. " To arms !" cried Mortimer, and couch'd Ms quiver- 
ing lance. 

Edmond de Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore. — Gray. 

They both were Lord Marchers, whose hands lay on the 
borders of Wales, and probably accompanied the king in 
this expedition. — Gray. 

Page 169. Frowns o'er cold Conway' s foaming flood. 

Mr. Wilmott, in his very pleasing "Journal of Summer- 
time in the Country," remarks : " A visitor to Wales, in 
the early part of the present century, objected to the 
description in 'The Bard,' of the ' foaming Conway.' And 
having imagined an error, he suggests this occasion of it: 
'Gray probably supposed the Conway to resemble the 
mountain torrents of Wales, of which the course is troubled 
and impetuous, although observation would have informed 
him that the Conway flows in a tranquil current through the 
valley.' This is sufficiently well. But Gray knew the 
Conway and its character. He chose a moment of tempest 
for the action of the ode, and treated the river with poetic 
liberty; the storm lashed the water into foam, and the 
hoary hair of the minstrel, standing upon the rock, 

' Stream' d like a meteor to the troubled air.' 



324 NOTES. 



The scene is full of agitation and dismay. Titian's noble 
landscape of 'St. Peter the martyr' is recalled to the 
mind. The sudden gust of wind, tossing over the robe of 
the Dominican, corresponds with the tumultuous attitude 
of the poet." P. 71.— R. 

Page 169. Loose his heard, and lioary hair. 

The image was taken from a well-known picture of 
Raphael, representing the Supreme Being in the vision 
of Ezekiel. There are two of these paintings, both believed 
to be originals, one at Florence, the other in the Duke of 
Orleans' collection at Paris. — Gray. 

Page 169. To high-born Hoel's harp. 

Hoel is called high-born, being the son of Owen Grwynedd, 
Prince of North Wales, by Finnog, an Irish damsel. He 
was one of his father's generals in his wars against the 
English, Flemings, and Normans, in South Wales; and 
was a famous bard, as his poems that are extant testify. 
See Evan. Spec. p. 26, 4to ; and Jones, Relics, vol. ii. p. 
36, where he is called the "Princely Bard," who says that 
he wrote eight pieces, five of which are translated by him in 
his interesting publication. The whole are given in Mr. 
Owen's translation, in Mr. Southey's Madoc, vol. ii. 
p. 162. 



NOTES. 325 



Page 169. Cold is Cadwallo's tongue. 

Cadwallo and Urien are mentioned by Dr. Evans in his 
" Dissertatio de Bardis," p. 78, among those bards of whom 
no works remain. See account of Urien' s death in Jones, 
Relics, i. p. 19. He is celebrated in the Triads, "as one of 
the three bulls of war." Taliessin dedicated to him up- 
wards of twelve poems, and wrote an elegy on his death : 
he was slain by treachery in the year 560. Modred is, I 
suppose, the famous "Myrddin ab Morvryn," called Merlyn 
the Wild; a disciple of Taliessin, and bard to the Lord 
Gwenddolaw ab Ceidiaw. He fought under King Arthur 
in 542, at the battle of Camlau, and accidentally slew his 
own nephew. He was reckoned a truer prophet than his 
predecessor the great magician Merdhin Ambrose. See a 
poem of his called the " Orchard" in Jones, Relics, vol. i. 
p. 24. I suppose Gray altered the name "euphoniae gra- 
tia;" as I can nowhere find a bard mentioned of the name 
of "Modred." 

Page 170. On dreary Arvon's shore they lie. 

The shores of Caernarvonshire opposite the isle of Angle- 
sey. — Gray. 

Page 170. The famish' d eagle screams, and passes by. 

Camden and others observe, that eagles used annually to 
build their aerie among the rocks of Snowdon, which from 
thence (as some think) were named by the Welsh Craigian- 



326 NOTES. 



eryri, or the crags of the eagles. At this day (I am told) 
the highest point of Snowdon is called the Eagle's Nest. 
That bird is certainly no stranger to this island, as the Scots, 
and the people of Cumberland, Westmoreland, &c. can testify : 
it even has built its nest upon the peak of Derbyshire. 
[See Willoughby's Ornithol. by Ray.] — Gray. 

Page 170. Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes. 

" As dear to me as are the ruddy drops 
That visit my sad heart." 

Jul. Cassar, act ii. sc. 1. — Gray. 

Page 170. And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line. 

See the Norwegian ode (the Fatal Sisters) that follows. — 
Gray. 

Page 171. The shrieks of death, through Berkley's roof that ring. 

Edward the Second, cruelly butchered in Berkley Castle. 
— Gray. See Drayton, Barons' Wars, v. lxvii. 
" Berkley, whose fair seat hath been famous long, 
Let thy sad echoes shriek a deadly sound 
To the vast air : complain his grievous wrong, 
And keep the blood that issued from his wound." 

Page 171. Shrielcs of an agonizing king. 

This line of Gray is almost in the same words as Hume's 
description, vol. ii. p. 359 : " The screams with which the 
agonizing king filled the castle." 



NOTES. 327 



Page 171. She-ivolf of France. 

Isabel of France, Edward the Second's adulterous queen. 
— Gray. 

This expression is from Shakspeare's Hen. VI. pt. III. 
act i. sc. 4 : " She-icolf of France, but worse than wolves 
of France." 

Page 171. The scourge of heaven. What terrors round him wait ! 
Triumphs of Edward the Third of France. — Gray. 

Page 171. Low on his funeral couch he lies. 

Death of that king, abandoned by his children, and even 
robbed in his last moments by his courtiers and his mis- 
tress. — Gray. 

Page 171. Is the sable warrior fled? 
Edward the Black Prince, dead some time before his 
father. — Gray. 

Page 171. Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows. 

Magnificence of Richard the Second's reign. See Frois- 
sart and other contemporary writers. — Gray. See M. of 
Venice, act ii. s. 6. " How like a younker," &c. Spenser, 
Vision of the World's Vanity, " Looking far forth," &c. 
And Vision of Petrarch, c. ii. " After at sea a tall ship did 
appear," &c. 



328 NOTES. 



Page 172. Reft of a crown, he yet may share the feast. 

Richard the Second, as we are told by Archbishop Scroop 
and the confederate lords in their manifesto, by Thomas of 
Walsingham, and all the older writers, was starved to death. 
The story of his assassination by Sir Piers of Exon is of 
much later date. — Gray. 

Page 172. Heard ye the din of battle bray. 
Ruinous wars of York and Lancaster. — Gray. 

Page 172. Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame. 

Henry the Sixth, George Duke of Clarence, Edward the 
Fifth, Richard Duke of York, &c, believed to be mur- 
dered secretly in the Tower of London. The oldest part 
of that structure is vulgarly attributed to Julius Caesar. — 
Gray. 

Page 172. Revere his consort' s faith, his father' s fame. 

Margaret of Anjou, a woman of heroic spirit, who strug- 
gled hard to save her husband and her crown. — Gray. 
Henry the Fifth. — Gray. 

Page 172. And spare the meek usurper's holy head. 

Henry the Sixth, very near being canonized. The line 
of Lancaster had no right of inheritance to the crown. — 
Gray. 



NOTES. 329 



Page 172. Above, below, the rose of snow. 

The white and red roses, devices of York and Lancaster. 
— Gray. 

Page 172. The bristled boar in infant-gore. 

The silver boar was the badge of Richard the Third; 
whence he was usually known in his own time by the name 
of the Boar. — Gray. 

Page 173. Half of thy heart we consecrate. 

Eleanor of Castile died a few years after the conquest of 
Wales. The heroic proof she gave of her affection for her 
lord is well known. The monuments of his regret and sor- 
row for the loss of her are still to be seen at Northampton, 
(xaddington, Waltham, and other places. — Gray. 

Page 173. No more our long-lost Arthur toe bewail. 

It was the common belief of the Welsh nation, that King- 
Arthur was still alive in Fairyland, and would return again 
to reign over Britain. 

Page 173. All hail, ye genuine kings, Britannia's issue, hail! 

Both Merlin and Taliessin had prophesied, that the Welsh 
should regain their sovereignty over this island; which 
seemed to be accomplished in the house of Tudor. — Gray. 



330 NOTES. 



Page 174. Her lion-port, her awe-commanding face. 

Speed, relating an audience given by Queen Elizabeth to 
Paul Dzialinski, ambassador of Poland, says, " And thus 
she, lion-like rising, daunted the malapert orator no less 
with her stately port and. majestical deporture, than with the 
tartnesse of her princelie checkes." — Gray. 



Page 174. Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear. 

Taliessin, chief of the bards, flourished in the sixth cen- 
tury. His works are still preserved, and his memory held 
in high veneration among his countrymen. — Gray. On his 
supposed sepulchre, see Wyndhain, Tour in Wales, p. 100. 

See Evans, Spec. p. 18, who says, " Taliessin's poems, on 
account of their great antiquity, are very obscure." There 
is a great deal of the Druidical cabala introduced in his 
works, especially about the transmigration of souls. Evans 
says that he had fifty of Taliessin's poems; and that many 
spurious ones are attributed to him. At p. 56, Evans has 
translated one of his odes, beginning "Fair Elphin, cease 
to weep •" comforting his friend on his bad success in the 
salmon-fishery. There is a fuller account of him in Jones, 
Kelics, vol. i. p. 18, 21; vol. ii. p. 12, 19, 31, 34, where 
many of his poems are translated; and Pennant's Wales, 
vol. ii. p. 316; and Turner's Vind. of the ancient British 
Poems, p. 225, 237. 



NOTES. 331 



Page 174. Fierce war, and faithful love. 

" Fierce wars and faithful loves shall moralize iny song." 
Spenser, Proeme to the F. Q. — Gray. 

Page 174. In buslcin'd measures move. 
Shakspeare. — Gray. 

Page 174. And distant warblings lessen on my ear. 
The succession of poets after Milton's time. — Gray. 

Page 181. And sad Chatillon, on Tier bridal morn. 

Mary de Valentia, Countess of Pembroke, daughter of 
Guy de Chatillon, Comte de St. Paul in France ; of whom 
tradition says, that her husband Audemar de Valentia, Earl 
of Pembroke, was slain at a tournament on the day of his 
nuptials. She was the foundress of Pembroke College or 
Hall, under the name of Aula Marise de Valentia. — 
Gray. 

Page 181. And princely Clare. 

Elizabeth de Burg, Countess of Clare, was wife of John 
de Burg, son and heir of the Earl of Ulster, and daughter 
of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, by Joan of Acres, 
daughter of Edward the First. Hence the poet gives 
her the epithet of princely. She founded Clare Hall. — 
Gray. 



332 NOTES. 



Page 181. And the paler rose. 

Elizabeth Widville, wife of Edward the Fourth, hence 
called the paler rose, as being of the house of York. 
She added to the foundation of Margaret of Anjou. — 
Gray. 

Page 181. And eitJier Henry there. 

Henry the Sixth and Eighth. The former the founder 
of King's, the latter the greatest benefactor to Trinity 
College. — Gray. 

Page 182. The venerable Margaret see. 

Countess of Richmond and Derby; the mother of Henry 
the Seventh, foundress of St. John's and Christ's Colleges. — 
G ray. 

Page 183. A Tudor 's fire, a Beaitfort's grace. 

The countess was a Beaufort, and married a Tudor : 
hence the application of this line to the Duke of Grafton, 
who claims descent from both these families. — Gray. 

Page 183. The laureate wreath, that Cecil wore, she brings. 

Lord Treasurer Burleigh was chancellor of the University 
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. — Gray. 



NOTES. 333 



Page 194. Iron sleet of arrowy shower. 

"How quick they wheel'd, and, flying, behind them shot 
Sharp sleet of arrowy shower." Par. Keg. iii. 324. — Gray. 

Page 194. Hurtles in the darken' d air. 

" The noise of battle hurtled in the air." 

Julius Cassar, act ii. s. 2. — Gray. 

Page 198. That leads to Hela's drear abode. 

Hela, in the Edda, is described with a dreadful counte- 
nance, and her body half flesh colour, and half blue. — Gray. 

Page 199. The thrilling verse that loakes the dead. 

The original word is Valgalldr ; from Yalr mortuus, and 
Galldr incantatio. — Gray. 

Page 201. Once again my call obey. 

Women were looked upon by the Gothic nations as hav- 
ing a peculiar insight into futurity; and some there were 
that made profession of magic arts and divination. These 
travelled round the country, and were received in every 
house with great respect and honour. Such a woman bore 
the name of Volva Seidkona or Spakona. The dress of 
Thorbiorga, one of these prophetesses, is described at large 
in Eirik's Rauda Sogu, (apud Bartholin, lib. i. cap. iv. 
p. 688.) " She had on a blue vest spangled all over with 



834 NOTES. 

stones, a necklace of glass beads, and a cap made of the 
skin of a black lamb lined with white cat-skin. She leaned 
on a staff adorned with brass, with a round head set with 
stones; and was girt with a Hunlandish bolt, at which 
hung her pouch full of magical instruments. Her buskins 
were of rough calf-skin, bound on with thongs studded with 
knobs of brass, and her gloves of white cat-skin, the fur 
turned inwards," &c. They were also called Fiolkyngi, or 
Fiolkunnug,\. e. Multi-scia; and Visindakona, i. e. Oraculo- 
rum Mulier; Nornir, i. e. Parcae. — Gray. 

Page 298. In Amorem Dormientem. 

Anthol. p. 332. Catullianam illam spirat mollitiem. — 
Gray. 

Page 299. From a Fragment of Plato. 

"Elegantissimum hercle fragmentum, quod sic Latine 
nostro modo adumbravimus." — Gray. 



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